SAINTS  IN 
SOCIETY 


MARGARET 
BAILLIE-SAUNDERS 


C/D 


Saints  in  Society 


SAINTS    IN 
SOCIETY... 


BY    MARGARET 
BAILLIE-SAUNDERS 


G.    P.    PUTNAM'S   SONS 

NEW   YORK  AND    LONDON 

3be  Imtcfcerbocfcer  press 
1906 


COPYRIGHT,  1905 

BY 
THE  KNICKERBOCKER  PRESS 


THE  DREAM 

THE  broad  noon  blazed  athwart  the  street, 

Adown  the  vulgar  way; 
I  met  myself  that  used  to  be 

In  this  unblest  to-day. 

Pity  for  those  who  meet  the  dead, 

Avenging  wrongs  of  yore; 
But  Christ  have  pity  on  him  who  meets 

Himself  that  is  no  more. 

His  face  was  as  the  morning  star, 

His  eyes  were  full  of  light; 
Singing  he  went — of  holy  songs 

That  rest  not  day  nor  night. 

The  same  old  visions  of  dead  things 

Hung  round  him  like  a  prayer; 
A  pack  of  dreams  was  on  his  back, 

And  a  halo  in  his  hair. 

He  wore  his  rags  so  well,  so  well, 

His  step  was  angel-gay; 
As  one  whose  clouds  of  glory  trail 

About  him  day  by  day. 

I  met  him  where  the  four  roads  meet, 

Hard  by  the  money-mart; 
He  turned  and  gazed  into  my  eyes, 

And  pierced  into  my  heart. 

"So,  fool,  I  know  you  well,"  I  said, 

The  words  fell  swift  and  hot. 
Sternly  he  spoke:  "So,  fool,"  he  said, 

"So,  fool — I  know  you  not." 

He  passed,  that  self  that  is  no  more, 

Adown  the  drift  of  years; 
And  left  a  silence  on  the  street 

And  a  passion  of  vain  tears. 

M.   B.-S. 


SAINTS  IN  SOCIETY 


PARTI 

CHAPTER  I 

T  T  E  sat  in  the  corner  of  a  jolting  tram  trundling 
1  *     its  idle  way  along  a  lost-looking  road  in 
•South  London. 

There  was  dingy  straw  on  the  floor  of  the 
vehicle,  in  which  rested  the  feet  of  miserable, 
sulky,  steamy  occupants,  making  a  hotbed  of 
microbes  born  of  unspeakable  ingredients.  It 
was  the  last  tram  for  the  night,  and  a  wan  light 
flickered  down  on  to  the  row  of  colourless,  sunken 
faces  of  the  belated  travellers;  everything  was 
drab,  everything  was  dull,  everything  was  sodden, 
save  one  thing — his  face.  And  his  face  was 
Dante's,  with  limitations:  having  features  of  a 
thicker  cut,  and  eyebrows  so  drawn  and  level 


21343C6 


2  Saints  in  Society 

in  their  black  brooding  as  to  suggest  Napoleon 
rather  than  Dante.  It  was  a  wonderful,  dark, 
fiery,  disturbing  face,  and  to-night,  in  this  thin 
December  fog  in  a  Walworth  tram,  it  burned 
with  an  outward  glow  of  its  own  which  seemed  to 
radiate  into  a  visible  rival  to  the  desultory  lamp. 

For  the  rest,  he  was  a  man  of  medium  build,  in 
a  shabby  overcoat,  whose  lumpy  outline  could 
not  entirely  hide  a  pair  of  fine  shoulders;  clean- 
shaven, but  too  pale  for  full  health,  and  wearing 
a  turned-down  collar  too  dusky  to  be  romantic. 

Above  the  row  of  passengers'  heads  opposite 
was  an  advertisement  in  the  window-pane  lauding 
a  powder  for  the  destruction  of  insects,  in  which 
a  lurid  picture  of  black  beetles  in  their  death- 
throes  was  exhibited.  Beyond  that  there  was 
another,  offering  a  remedy  for  all  possible  physical 
ills  at  a  shilling  and  a  halfpenny  a  jar ;  beyond  it 
another,  showing  by  a  picture  of  an  extremely 
pink  prize-fighter,  with  limbs  like  balloons,  how 
to  be  strong  for  ever.  A  further  one  showed  the 
uses  of  a  patent  food  for  the  development  of  the 
coming  Hercules ;  and  yet  a  further  one  offered  an 
elixir  which,  in  its  own  words,  cured  "everything" 
with  an  ambiguity  at  once  daring  and  sublime. 

His  eyes,  resting  lightly  on  these  things,  fell 


Saints  in  Society  3 

again  on  to  the  faces  and  forms  below  them — 
skinny,  shrivelled,  white-lipped,  dull-eyed,  meagre, 
stunted — a  galaxy  to  make  angels  weep. 

"Dear  God,"  he  said,  half  aloud,  "my  poor, 
poor  friends!  To  be  strong  for  ever!" 

He  uttered  it  as  an  ejaculation.  The  bulk  of 
the  passengers  remained  indifferent,  but  one  dim- 
eyed  youth,  with  a  sickly,  defiant  face  and  broken 
boots,  looked  up  at  him  suspiciously,  with  the 
ready  resentment  of  the  Cockney  to  anything 
strange.  The  contempt  in  his  spiritless  eyes 
was  intense.  His  reflections  were  possibly  only 
"bloomin'  Methody,"  but  he  looked  the  abso- 
lutely venomous  scorn  of  the  listless  for  en- 
thusiasm in  any  form,  particularly  the  enthusiasm 
of  pity.  When  the  man  in  the  corner,  his  face 
still  aglow  with  that  glorifying  preoccupation, 
whatever  it  was,  got  up  and  swung  to  the  door 
holding  on  by  the  rail,  the  defiant  Cockney 
snorted  audibly,  and  watched  him  drop  con- 
fidently off  the  jogging  footboard  with  that 
smouldering  indignation  still  making  more  murky 
his  ignoble  face,  while  the  gaudy-coloured  thing 
above  his  doomed,  starved,  pitiful  form  con- 
tinued to  tell  him,  to  the  reiterated  rattle,  rattle 
of  the  tram,  how  to  be  healthy,  and  strong,  and 


4  Saints  in  Society 

brave,  and  beautiful,  like  the  wind-braced  gods 
of  Hellas. 

The  cause  of  this  passing  hate,  named  plainly 
Mark  Hading,  walked  along  rapidly  and  turned 
into  a  mesh  of  mean  streets;  row  upon  row  of 
small  drab  houses,  all  alike,  stretching  away  into 
interminable  distance.  Into  one  of  these,  in  a 
street  called  Minden  Street,  he  presently  let  him- 
self with  a  latch-key,  carefully  wiping  his  feet  on 
a  shabby  mat,  and  stepping  softly  upstairs  to  a 
room  at  the  back  of  the  tiny  house.  A  light 
streamed  from  the  half-open  door,  and  he  went  in, 
calling  "Flower"  in  a  calmly  cheery  voice.  A 
girl  turned  round  at  his  entrance. 

"How  late  you  are!"  she  said  pettishly.  She 
was  busy  trying  on  a  brittle  pearl  necklace  around 
a  not  too  snowy  neck,  and  was  twisting  before  a 
mean  parlour  mantel  mirror  to  do  so,  pursing  up 
her  mouth  and  enlarging  her  eyes  to  get  a  good 
effect. 

His  face  fell  just  a  little,  but  he  spoke  kindly : 

"Ah,  but,  little  Flower,  it  was  such  a  meeting! 
Never  have  we  had  such  a  meeting.  The  room 
was  packed.  The  thing  was  wonderful.  And  I 
have  made  a  friend.  But  is  there  anything  for 
me  to  eat  ?  I  have  spoken  for  two  whole  hours — 


Saints  in  Society  5 

never,  never  before  as  I  spoke  to-night.     And  I 
am  tired,  child,  and  hungry." 

The  girl  threw  down  her  necklace  with  an  im- 
patient jerk.  All  her  ways  were  jerky.  She  was 
a  tall  girl — very  tall  for  her  extreme  slimness,— 
with  the  typical  beauty  of  the  London  girl  of  the 
lower  classes.  She  had  even  but  puffy  features; 
deep-set,  discontented  eyes  of  greeny  grey,  with 
good  lashes  and  brows;  a  thick,  sulky-looking 
mouth.  Her  complexion  was  muddy  and  dull, 
and  her  hair,  which  Heaven  had  intended  to  be 
fair  brown,  was  drab  through  ill  washing,  and  had 
no  gloss  on  its  really  thick  and  massive  waves. 
It  was,  indeed,  rolled  heavily  round  a  lumpy  pad, 
which  showed  here  and  there  in  an  "aureole" 
form  that  Walworth  working-girls  had  made  a 
mode.  The  "points"  she  could  give  were  so 
bad  that  one's  first  impression  upon  seeing  her 
was  to  wonder  that  she  could  give  an  idea  of  good 
looks  at  all ;  yet  she  did,  in  the  mysterious  fashion 
that  hundreds  of  white-faced  Cockney  girls  give 
it.  It  may  be  due  to  the  carriage  of  the  head  on 
the  long  column-like  neck ;  the  easy  walk  learned 
in  the  School  Board  drill;  the  good,  propor- 
tionate outlines,  that  make  up  for  the  utter  drab- 
ness  of  the  colouring;  also,  in  some  degree,  the 


6  Saints  in  Society 

mystery  imparted  by  that  settled  sulky  stare 
which  she  fondly  calls  "  hauteur,"  and  which  gives 
her  an  air  of  aloofness — sometimes  distinction, — 
interesting,  though  hardly  attractive.  There  was 
also  something  to  be  said  for  the  really  wonderful 
knack  of  suiting  herself  in  even  the  shabbiest  of 
clothes  that  every  lower-class  London  woman 
seems  to  have  in  such  perfection.  This  girl, 
Chloris  Hading,  the  wife  of  the  man  before  her, 
wore  a  blouse,  bought  ready-made  at  a  cheap 
shop,  and  mean  enough  in  its  skimpy  proportions 
to  cling  to  the  figure  like  a  jersey.  It  was  a 
dingy  edition  of  what  was  once  pale  green,  and 
had  some  draggly  lace  about  it ;  yet  she  had  put 
it  on  well,  and  it  "set"  with  some  hint  of  an  air. 
Her  shabby  skirt,  of  the  poorest  stuff,  fitted 
mysteriously  well  on  the  hips,  but  wanted  mend- 
ing badly  at  the  edge.  She  lifted  it  with  an 
American  "crook"  of  her  elbow — it  was  long — as 
she  stepped  across  the  room  to  a  cupboard  and 
took  out  several  small  dishes  and  plates  and  a 
shabby  tablecloth,  which  she  proceeded  to  spread 
crooked  over  only  a  quarter  of  the  table  in  front 
of  her  husband.  She  did  this  wifely  duty  grudg- 
ingly, with  apparent  scorn.  Certainly  the  old 
black-handled  knives  and  forks,  the  slab  of  cold 


Saints  in  Society  7 

meat,  the  doubtful  water- jug,  were  not  calculated 
to  raise  one's  spirits. 

While  the  weary  husband  ate  this  comfortless 
meal  she  sat  looking  moodily  into  the  fire.  The 
hearth  needed  brushing  up,  it  was  choked  with 
cinders,  and  the  rest  of  the  little  table  not  occupied 
by  the  mean  supper  was  covered  with  ends  of 
some  rough  sewing  that  she  had  evidently  been 
doing — something  fine  and  cheap — for  her  own 
adornment.  These  things  did  not  appear  to 
strike  her  at  all.  She  had  almost  the  same  look 
on  her  face  as  the  defiant  young  man  in  the  tram, 
and  it  spoilt  her  beauty.  Mark's  face  still  bore 
the  glory  of  his  dream. 

"The  hall  was  packed  with  men,"  he  said  as  if 
thinking  aloud.  "They  never  listened  before  as 
they  did  to-night,  Clo.  I  believe  I  could  lead 
them  to  anything;  I  say  it  without  selfishness. 
I  hope  it  is  not  myself  I  care  about,  but  those 
poor  fellows — those  tired  faces,  those  weary  lives, 
those  noble  souls  imprisoned,  undreamt  of,  lying 
lost  like  rubbish  in  a  lumber-room  under  the 
fearful  effort  of  daily  bread-getting  and  the 
struggle  to  live.  Christ  can  be  brought  to  these, 
but  not  by  mere  sentiment.  We  must  get  the 
great  leaders  and  lawmakers  of  the  land  to  join 


8  Saints  in  Society 

hands  with  us  if  we  are  to  help  them.  We  must 
fight  against  the  cause  of  selfish  wealth,  and  that 
I  am  going  to  do,  that  I  mean  to  do.  Francis  of 
Assisi  did  that.  He  taught  the  rich  and  the 
great  to  love  the  poor.  He  overcame  the  most 
fearful  social  conditions — ay,  and  political — that 
ever  a  man  had  to  fight.  And  how  did  he  do  it? 
By  love.  What  is  wanted  now  is  love.  We 
must  love  these  creatures  with  all  our  heart  and 
soul  and  strength.  That  is  the  only  way — the 
only  way." 

He  paused.  Clo  gave  a  short  laugh,  mean  and 
mirthless. 

"You  talk  like  Mrs.  Deane,"  she  said  con- 
temptuously. "That 's  what  she  's  always  say- 
ing." 

"Dorcas  Deane  is  a  blessed  woman,"  he 
answered  solemnly.  Then  his  eyes  fell  upon  the 
drooping  girl,  for  the  first  time,  perhaps,  seeingly. 
Saints  in  trances  are  often  obtuse. 

"  You  're  tired,  Flower,"  he  said  kindly.  "  Have 
you  been  very  dull?  I  'm  afraid  you  have." 

"Oh!  Mrs.  Deane  came  up  and  jawed  me," 
she  said  rudely,  "about  the  Bible  and  things. 
And  I  've  been  out  looking  at  the  shops.  There  's 
a  good  play  coming  on  at  the  Rarity — lovely 


Saints  in  Society  9 

big  posters  I  saw.  Fine!  It  was  called  The 
Wild  Worst  Woman."  Her  voice  suddenly  grew 
eager.  "Nesta  Nilley 's  going  to  be  there,  and 
Georgie  Hicks,  and  all  that  lot.  Could  n't  I  go, 
Mark,  just  for  once?" 

Mark's  face  clouded.     He  spoke  very  sadly. 

"I  've  said  ' No'  to  you  so  often,"  he  said,  after 
a  pause,  "I  suppose  I  must  say  'Yes'  this  once, 
if  your  heart  is  set  on  it,  Flower.  But,  child,  it 
can  do  you  no  good,  and  infinite  miserable  harm. 
Who  will  go  with  you?  Mrs.  Tombs,  I  suppose. 
I  can't  let  you  go  without  her." 

The  girl's  face  softened  a  little,  but  she  was  too 
London-bred  to  be  gracious.  Cities  kill  grace. 

"All  right,"  she  said  laconically,  though  in 
reality  she  felt  distinctly  grateful.  Then  she 
held  the  necklace  of  glassy  pearls  with  the  dia- 
mond clasp  out  to  the  light  of  the  one  lamp,  in 
a  rapture  of  contemplation. 

"Ten — three,"  she  said  ecstatically. 

To  this  sibyllic  utterance  no  answer  was 
vouchsafed.  Perhaps  it  required  none.  Mark 
sighed,  but  took  out  his  pipe,  which  he  lighted, 
and  came  and  sat  by  the  girl.  The  mystic 
figures  "Ten — three"  still  hung  potent  in  the 
silence  they  had  created,  but  they  had  not  the 


io  Saints  in  Society 

effect  of  drawing  the  man's  eyes  to  the  bauble. 
He  was  looking  with  his  strong,  direct  gaze  into 
the  fire,  lost  in  thought. 

Clo  put  aside  her  unappreciated  bargain  with 
a  pout — that  pout  that  was  making  her  face 
almost  repulsive.  She  had  learned  it  quite  early 
at  the  Board  School,  where  it  was  considered 
good  form,  and  had  been  confirmed  in  it  by  read- 
ing penny  novels,  wherein  the  heroine  always 
tantalised  the  hero  with  her  "adorable  pout"  in 
a  manner  so  truly  life-like.  Men,  in  real  life, 
have  such  a  singular  admiration  for  sulks! 

"  I  suppose  you  think  I  ought  to  go  about  with 
you  more,"  she  said  suddenly;  "Mrs.  Deane  says 
I  ought.  Guess  it 's  dull  enough  at  those  meet- 
ings of  yours,  half  about  Parliament  and  half 
about  God.  You  're  always  at  them.  'T  ain't 
lively  for  me.  But — but,  I  '11  go  to-morrow  if 
you  like."  This  was  a  concession. 

"Oh,  dearie!"  he  answered  warmly,  "you  will 
come?  Of  course  you  shall.  Why,  I  haven't 
had  a  chance  to  tell  you,  but  to-morrow  will  be 
the  biggest  day  of  my  life.  I  fully  believe  it  will 
be  my  great  chance.  To-night  at  Shoreditch,  Sir 
Samuel  Crawshay — our  member,  you  know — was 
present  to  hear  me — he  came  over  in  his  motor 


Saints  in  Society  n 

on  purpose.  But  better  still,  Stillingfleet  was 
there — you  know,  Lord  Henry  Vade's  man  of 
business,  secretary,  what  not;  he  was  sent 
specially,  and  he  was  so  enthusiastic  I  could 
hardly  get  away  from  him:  they  were  all  the 
same.  And  Stillingfleet  says  that  Lord  Henry 
Vade  is  coming  to-morrow  to  hear  me  at  Islington, 
and  to  speak  to  me,  and  all  sorts  of  possibilities 
open  up  for  my  great  work.  At  last,  at  last 
something  will  be  done  for  my  poor  brothers  and 
sisters." 

He  talked  on  for  another  hour.  Clo  sat  listen- 
ing and  watching  him  with  a  fascinated  gaze  that 
turned  her  greyish  eyes  into  the  green  glow  of 
an  aquamarine,  all  the  dulness  gone  from  her  face. 

"La,"  she  said,  breathlessly,  "  I  '11  come  right 
enough.  Rather — if  there  's  Dukes  to  look  at!" 


CHAPTER  II 

T  ORD  LISTOWER  sat  at  dinner  in  a  mass  of 
*— '  orange  lights,  and  silver,  and  blue  flowers, 
contemplated  by  sections  of  his  ancestors  loom- 
ing out  of  the  dusk  that  wrapped  all  of  the  im- 
mense church-like  room  save  the  pool  of  brilliance 
round  the  table.  Lord  Listower  was  tall  and 
emaciated,  with  a  pale  grey  imperial  and  a 
straight,  trimly  pointed  moustache,  curly  silver 
hair  parted  in  the  middle,  high  cheek-bones,  a 
deeply  sallow  complexion,  and  the  very  bluest 
of  blue  eyes  containing  an  expression  of  great 
foolishness.  Nevertheless,  he  had  filled  in  his 
day  some  of  the  severest  of  diplomatic  posts 
with  distinct  honour.  His  foolishness  of  look  was, 
too,  really  charming.  It  disarmed  you  at  once. 

"Henry  's  found  a  man,"  he  said  smilingly, 
addressing  his  wife  across  the  banks  of  flowers. 
He  was  always  smiling  in  that  inscrutable, 
watery  way. 

"Who?"  said  her  ladyship,  truculently.     She 

12 


Saints  in  Society  13 

was  a  long-nosed  woman,  with  a  very  round  face 
and  very  small  mouth,  and  had  a  blue-black  wig 
much  too  heavy  for  her,  like  Queen  Anne's.  She 
wore  big  earrings  and  many  really  beautiful 
jewels  of  antique  pattern,  but  her  dress,  which 
was  always  elaborate,  had  got  only  to  the  'eighties 
and  had  there  stopped,  apparently.  She  had  a 
penchant  for  black  Spanish  lace  guipure  over 
bright  blotting-paper  pink,  of  which  her  costume 
was  to-night  composed,  and  she  had  preserved, 
though  in  a  matronly  fashion,  the  "hour-glass" 
outline  of  the  ideal  figure  of  the  'eighties,  together 
with  its  high  shoulders  and  bust,  its  tight  sleeves, 
and  its  basqued  bodices.  Her  features  were 
plain,  her  expression  forbidding,  nevertheless  she 
looked  to  the  full  the  Countess  of  Listower  she 
was,  by  some  mysterious  logical  process  by  which 
birth  and  truth  (and  murder)  "will  out."  She 
had  not  been  Lady  Adeliza  Theresa  Tilney 
Rochmane  for  nothing,  and  the  daughter  of  a 
Duke,  and  a  line  of  such. 

"Quite  a  real  man  this  time,"  continued  Lord 
Listower.  "Ask  Henry  himself,  he  will  tell  you. 
Savonarola,  I  believe,  with  a  touch  of  John 
Burns,  and  just  a  flavour  of  Sacheverell,  Napoleon, 
Garibaldi,  and  Charles  Wesley.  Quite  explosive." 


14  Saints  in  Society 

"It  sounds  horribly  tiresome,"  said  Lady  Lis- 
tower,  crossly.  "I  hope  he  won't  come  here." 

"No  fear,  mother,  for  the  present,"  laughed 
the  great  Henry. 

"You  are  a  dear  boy,  and  an  angel,"  said  she, 
irrelevantly  and  gushingly,  "but  you  have  found 
so  many  tiresome  men  so  often  before  that  you 
must  forgive  your  old  mammie  for  being  sus- 
picious." 

She  said  this  with  a  saccharine  ogling  quite  em- 
barrassing, one  would  think,  to  Henry.  But  that 
worthy  looked  undisturbed.  His  high  shoulders 
fell  not,  his  triangular  mouth  remained  impassive. 
"I  '11  keep  him  where  he  lives  for  the  present," 
he  said,  "don't  fear." 

"Where  's  that?"  said  a  wee  high  voice  from 
over  the  other  side  of  the  blue  hedge  of  flowers. 

"Walworth,"  said  Henry;  "a  place  over  a 
river,  with  no  houses,  where  it  is  always  night." 

"No  houses.  How  funny!"  said  the  piping 
voice.  "Does  he  live  in  the  sand?" 

"In  the  mud,"  replied  Henry,  with  his  father's 
smile  and  chronic  shrug.  "  I  think  there  's  a  hut. 
The  scenery  is  warehouses  and  huts,  varied  by 
tram  lines.  There  are  groves  of  undertakers' 
shops  interspersed  by  rich  clumps  of  public- 


Saints  in  Society  15 

houses;  and  furniture  shops  where  all  the  fur- 
niture is  bamboo.  There  are  stalls  where  they 
sell  shell-fish  and  rabbit-skins.  I  don't  know 
why." 

"It  sounds  so  Red  Indian,"  said  Lord  Lis- 
tower;  "shall  we  add  Hiawatha  to  the  list  of 
possibilities  ? " 

"Yes;  but  we  shall  have  to  give  him  the 
blanket,"  answered  Henry,  a  little  ruefully;  "they 
have  n't  enough  of  those  down  there." 

Lord  Henry  Vade,  a  thin  man  of  unguessable 
age,  extending  from  a  possible  thirty  to  fifty,  had 
the  Listower  smile  in  all  its  supreme  and  graceful 
foolishness.  On  his  thin,  high-cheek-boned  face, 
and  even,  sharp  features,  with  his  set  china-blue 
eyes  and  pink-and-white  waxen  complexion,  it 
had  an  almost  sinister  effect.  He  looked  like  the 
wax  figures  of  ancient  sovereigns  at  Westminster 
Abbey,  with  their  awful  eternal  simper  and  utter 
stillness.  He  had  long  thin  pale  hands  that 
looked  dead — it  sounds  horrible  and  it  looked  so: 
and  he  might  have  sat  for  the  villain  in  a  mediaeval 
piece,  except  that  he  was  rather  fair,  which  of 
course,  in  a  melodramatic  sense,  exonerated  him — 
in  spite  of  the  gorgeous  precedents  of  Philip  II. 
of  Spain,  Uriah  Heep,  and  Judas. 


1 6  Saints  in  Society 

If  his  father's  grin  made  him  look  like  Riche- 
lieu, Henry's  made  him  look  like  lago.  Yet  he 
was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  saint  of  the  family: 
by  far  the  best  man  in  it,  which  is  another  thing 
altogether.  So  does  Nature  play  us  tricks. 

Opposite  to  him  sat  his  sister  Veronica,  his 
feminine  counterpart  at  twenty-seven  years  of 
age,  save  for  greater  piquancy  and  less  pictur- 
esque villainy  of  face.  There  were  those  who 
compared  her  to  the  portraits  of  Emma,  Lady 
Hamilton,  but  she  was  much  thinner  and  much 
colder,  and  her  smile  was  a  chronic  and  deter- 
mined simper;  not,  as  in  her  prototype,  the 
ebullition  of  eternal,  deathless  youth.  The  colour 
on  her  high  cheeks  was  too  high,  and  her  eyes 
were  a  deeper  blue  and  her  lashes  darker  than 
Henry's.  To-night  she  wore  peach  colour  and 
exquisite  pearl  and  emerald  ornaments  set  in 
heavy  silver.  Her  artificially  reddened  hair  was 
dressed  h  la  Kauffmann,  rolled  back  in  a  wave 
from  her  eager  face. 

The  other  two  members  of  the  family  now  at 
home  were  the  two  younger  brothers,  Pegram 
and  Bunny,  Pegram  being  the  owner  of  the 
piping  voice.  He  was  little  and  fat,  and  quite 
different  from  the  Listowers ;  he  had  his  mother's 


Saints  in  Society  17 

rounder  face  and  dark  frizzy  hair  parted  in  the 
middle,  but  the  Listower  smile  in  his  quite 
absurdly  goggle,  protruding  eyes.  He  had  the 
voice  of  a  child,  the  habits  of  a  groom,  and  what 
ideas  and  opinions  none  had  ever  discovered. 

Bunny  was  faded  and  grey  and  thin,  with 
heavy  eyelids  and  the  air  of  having  been  up  all 
night  all  his  life,  and  by  never  having  gone  to 
sleep  at  night  never  having  been  really  awake  by 
day.  He  had  the  Listower  thinness,  but  the 
Rochmane  lumpiness  of  outline,  which  gave  his 
head,  as  well  as  all  his  features  individually,  the 
appearance  of  a  series  of  door  handles.  For  in- 
stance, he  had  a  round  head  but  a  thin  neck;  a 
round  end  to  a  thin-bridged  nose ;  a  knobbly  chin 
to  a  tiny,  haggard  face.  He  was  very  pale,  and 
very  light,  and  very  old,  and,  like  Pegram,  clean- 
shaven. Yet  he  was  only  twenty-two  and  the 
youngest  of  the  family.  He  turned  to  Henry  now. 

"What  is  his  name?"  he  said. 

"Mark  Hading,"  answered  the  unmoved  one. 
"You  know  the  dream  of  my  life  is  to  found 
a  Labour  Candidate;  endow  it,  give  it  a  seat 
in  Parliament;  buy  it  a  newspaper;  rouse  its 
temper;  and  see  how  it  works.  I  am  a  social 
reformer." 


1 8  Saints  in  Society 

"  Let  me  rouse  its  temper,"  piped  Pegram  from 
his  blue  arbour. 

"You  ? ' '  said  Veronica,  speaking  for  the  first  time. 
' '  You  idiot,  nobody  could  ever  get  angry  with  you. ' ' 

Her  words  lost  their  sting  by  the  accompani- 
ment Of  the  simper  which  enwreathed  them. 
Then  she  turned  to  her  elder  brother. 

"Has  he  a  beard?"  she  said  dreamily. 

"No,"  replied  he,  "not  at  all.  He  is  clean- 
shaven. His  face  is  ripping.  He  's  a  splendid- 
looking  creature." 

"I  thought  Labour  candidates  always  had 
beards.  That 's  really  why  I  always  hated  them. 
But  in  this  case — shall  I  assist  you?  1 11  come 
with  you  and  look  him  over  if  you  like — did  n't 
you  say  you  go  to  hear  him  to-night?" 

"Vera!"  said  her  mother,  pettishly,  "you  can 
never  turn  out  to-night  to  examine  a  man  in 
rabbit-skins.  It  would  be  most  dangerous;  you 
would  catch  cold." 

"I've  got  my  motor  brougham  here,"  said 
Henry;  "she  '11  be  all  right.  Come  along,  Vedi, 
and  see  the  monster  for  yourself.  Dear  mamma, 
you  will  let  her?" 

When  Henry  said  "dear  mamma"  he  got  his 
way.  His  mother  adored  him,  so  much  so  that 


Saints  in  Society  19 

indeed  she  had  never  forgiven  her  eldest  son, 
Lord  Creek,  for  occupying  that  seniority  of  post. 
Even  now  she  revenged  herself  by  keeping  his 
wife  in  mortal  fear  of  her  letters  and  sending  her 
mean  Christmas  presents  from  the  stores.  But 
Henry,  the  second  son,  was  her  soul,  her  idol: 
while  Vera,  Pegram,  and  Bunny  were  pieces  of 
dull  but  necessary  and  respectable  furniture. 

Vera's  interest,  once  roused,  was  spasmodically 
keen.  Time  was  getting  on,  she  said — would  her 
father  excuse  her  and  let  her  go  and  put  on  a 
warm  cloak?  She  never  addressed  her  mother  if 
she  could  avoid  doing  so. 

"Yes,  yes,"  said  Lord  Listower,  "yes,  put  on 
some  sables  and  warm  things.  Don't — don't 
catch  a  chill.  Poor  D'Auvernay — you  know  the 
man? — of  the  Foreign  Office  got  a  chill  attending 
six  peers'  funerals  in  a  fortnight,  quite  the  other 
day.  They  were  Irish  peers,  were  n't  they, 
Henry?  I  forget.  But  anyhow  he  died.  You 
must  n't  do  that,  dearest." 

"  I  should  have  thought  peers'  funerals  would 
have  been  warm  things — Irish  peers',"  said 
Pegram,  weakly,  from  the  blue  cosy-corner. 
There  was  no  laugh  to  follow  this  jest,  but  Bunny 
snarled  and  took  a  liqueur. 


20  Saints  in  Society 

Vera  was  not  long  over  her  sables  and  came 
down  just  as  Henry  was  ready  to  go  and  looking 
impatiently  at  his  watch. 

When  they  were  fairly  started  and  found  them- 
selves spinning  away  through  miles  of  unknown 
streets  bright  with  light  and  traffic,  Vera  turned 
to  him. 

"Are  you  really  going  to  run  this  man?"  she 
said,  with  genuine  curiosity  in  her  wide-apart, 
hard  eyes. 

"  I  am  if  he  is  all  Stillingfleet  says  he  is,"  he 
answered. 

"Then  you  haven't  seen  him? — it  is  only  on 
the  word  of  Stillingfleet?" 

"Yes,  and  Crawshay." 

"Oh!  he  too?  But  Stillingfleet  knows  better 
what  he  is  talking  about.  Poor  Sam  Crawshay 
is  so  Arcadian ;  every  one  to  him  is  perfect  except 
his  own  relations.  He  loves  all  the  world." 

"While  Stillingfleet?" — he  began  meaningly. 

"Secretaries  cannot  love,"  answered  she,  lacon- 
ically. But  there  came  a  mocking,  ruminative 
look  into  her  eyes  as  if  she  had  had  some  half- 
amusing  ulterior  thought.  Her  brother  laughed. 

"  He  has  a  wife,  Vedi,"  he  said. 

"That   proves   nothing,"    answered   she;    and 


Saints  in  Society  21 

after  a  pause,  "And  has  he?  I  never  thought 
about  such  people's  private  affairs.  Do  they 
have  them?  I  suppose  they  do ?" 

"She's  not  such  a  private  affair  either,"  he 
answered;  "she  often  goes  about  to  see  him  per- 
form when  he  is  in  my  train.  She  may  be  there 
to-night.  Should  n't  wonder.  She  's  by  way  of 
being  political  for  what  she  can  get.  She  'd  go  to 
a  Borough  Council  drain-pipe  squabble  if  she 
could  see  a  baronet's  boots  for  half  a  minute." 

Vedi  merely  shrugged  contemptuously  under 
her  furs.  But  when  the  motor  drew  up  at  the 
door  of  the  Islington  Hall  and  a  tall  man  with  a 
military  moustache  and  very  fine  feminine-looking 
eyes  came  running  out  to  bow  them  in,  she  put 
out  her  hand  and  said,  "Ah,  Mr.  Stillingfleet,  I 
am  come  to  approve  your  choice,"  with  a  glance 
so  lingering  and  full  of  meaning  that  the  secretary 
felt  a  little  giddy  and  led  her  into  the  lighted  hall 
without  clearly  seeing  where  he  was  going. 


CHAPTER  III 

the  morning  of  the  Islington  meeting  Clo 
Hading  had  pinned  a  big  hat,  with  feathers 
so  completely  out  of  curl  as  to  resemble  herring 
bones,  somewhat  viciously  on  to  her  head  in  her 
usual  jerky  fashion,  and  had  gone  down  the 
street  and  knocked  loudly  at  the  door  of  a  neigh- 
bouring house,  a  little  drab  dwelling  exactly  like 
her  own,  save  that  it  was  kept  in  tidier  condition. 
The  minute  patch  of  earth  between  the  railings 
and  the  house  called  "the  front  garden"  was  in 
better  order ;  in  the  summer  it  was  quite  gay  with 
white  Alyssum  and  lanky  marigolds,  but  just  now 
it  savoured  of  winter  and  even  sported  some  orange 
peel  in  its  border.  There  was  a  brass  plate,  too, 
on  the  door,  in  excellent  order,  saying  on  it,  "  Mrs. 
Tombs."  Not  that  this  lady  had  any  profession 
or  kept  any  institution  requiring  such  a  state- 
ment of  her  name  to  the  public ;  but  the  late  Mr. 
Tombs  had  been  a  small  builder,  very  small  in- 
deed, but  a  "master  man,"  and  on  the  strength 

22 


Saints  in  Society  23 

of  this  social  elevation  Mrs.  Tombs  adhered  to 
the  custom  of  using  a  brass  plate  for  her  own 
name  when  her  husband's  death  made  the  use  of 
his  plate  a  mockery.  To  the  widow's  mind  her 
glory  would  indeed  have  departed  had  she  allowed 
the  brass  plate  institution  to  lapse;  brass  plates 
they  had  always  had.  So  she  had  one  made  for 
herself.  She  was  accustomed  to  say,  in  dis- 
paragement of  the  socially  inferior,  "My  dear, 
they  are  not  brass-plate  people." 

In  addition  to  this  distinction  she  had,  of 
course,  gained  by  her  husband's  death  the  glorious 
right  to  wear  widow's  "weeds,"  a  privilege  valued 
indeed  in  her  particular  world.  And  though  she 
would  never  have  admitted  it,  she  really  loved 
the  vast  crepe  attire  with  the  heavy  bonnet  of 
rather  rusty  black  that  this  state  enjoined;  and 
above  all  the  long  black  wagging  earrings  with  a 
lugubrious  design  of  hands  holding  broken  torches 
worked  out  in  jet. 

Her  visitor  announced,  she  toddled  briskly  into 
her  "parlour"  and  kissed  Mrs.  Hading  joyfully. 
As  it  was  the  morning  she  was  not  in  her  full 
mourning  regalia,  but  wore  a  short  black  skirt 
pinned  up  with  black  safety-pins  in  loops  all 
round  her  round  form,  a  black  and  white  check 


24  Saints  in  Society 

cotton  morning  jacket;  and  though  not  the  jet 
earrings,  a  pair  of  inferior  significance  as  symbols 
but  even  superior  as  curiosities — namely,  com- 
posed of  hair — dark  brown  hair — and  filigree. 
These  ghastly  adornments,  with  an  oval  brooch 
to  match,  were  her  usual  wear  for  "off"  occasions. 
They  really  signified  "off ness."  Mrs.  Tombs  was 
a  little,  round,  red-faced  woman  with  jet-black 
locks  of  her  own,  so  that  the  question  as  to  whose 
dark-brown  scalp  she  carried  about  with  her  in 
this  gruesome  manner  had  often  been  on  Chloris's 
lips,  but  she  had  not  quite  dared  to  put  it.  Lord 
Listower  would  have  felt  the  Red  Indian  element 
to  have  been  doubled  could  he  have  seen  these 
barbaric  gewgaws. 

Chloris  gave  her  invitation — Would  she  come 
with  her  to  hear  her  husband  speak  at  Islington? 

"Delighted,  dear,"  said  the  little  widow,  who 
loved  an  outing  less  for  its  own  sake  than  for  the 
full  display  of  the  jet  earrings. 

"Because,"  said  Clo,  "Mark  doesn't  like  me 
going  alone.  He  says  there  '11  be  a  lot  of  men, 
some  of  them  rough,  and  I  ought  to  sit  right  near 
the  front  and  have  a  lady  with  me.  Besides, 
there  's  to  be  some  Dukes  there." 

She  laughed  and  nodded.     Mrs.  Tombs 's  ear- 


Saints  in  Society  25 

rings  waved  in  a  wild  tumult  as  she  nodded  with 
her  in  huge  delight.  "  Dear,  dear — how  lovely," 
she  said;  "we  shall  be  grand.  It  will  be  like  the 
old  days  to  me.  Just  like  the  old  days." 

When  the  evening  arrived,  the  young  wife  of  the 
speaker  came  very  early  to  the  Islington  Hall,  and, 
accompanied  by  her  friend  the  widow,  in  full 
regalia,  was  placed  in  a  front  seat  to  the  left  of 
the  hall. 

As  she  sat  and  gazed  round  at  the  now  rapidly 
filling  and  cheerfully  lighted  place,  a  sense  of 
pride  of  some  sort  began  to  stir  in  her  vulgar 
little  mind.  The  gallery  was  already  packed  and 
the  other  seats  were  being  filled  with  a  steady  in- 
flux of  men,  all  looking  earnest  and  ready  for 
some  occasion  of  extra  interest.  The  girl  began 
to  feel  a  thrill  of  something  like  excitement. 
Could  Mark  do  this?  Had  he  brought  all  these 
men  together?  This  immense  and  growing  crowd 
— was  it  collecting  to  hear  Mark?  If  so,  he 
was  n't  so  dull,  then,  after  all.  Even  Georgie 
Hicks,  the  joy  of  the  Walworth  pantomime,  who 
dressed  up  as  a  tipsy  frog  and  stood  on  his  head, 
could  do  no  more.  She  felt  a  little  real  pride  in 
her  husband  for  the  first  time.  It  had  never  oc- 
curred to  her  before.  And  she,  too — she  was  put 


26  Saints  in  Society 

in  a  front  seat  and  made  much  of  as  his  wife. 
This,  also,  was  a  new  idea.  She  began  to  feel 
the  dawning  sense  of  power,  to  feel  herself  to  be 
somebody  of  importance,  and  the  rush  of  re- 
flections that  came  to  her  made  her  sit  very  still 
and  keep  very  silent. 

She  was  looking  a  little  better  to-night,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  she  had  not  regarded  the  oc- 
casion as  one  upon  which  to  make  herself  "a 
swell,"  as  she  called  it.  The  result  of  this  was 
that  her  shabby  black  coat  and  skirt  were  at  least 
neat,  and  her  hat,  no  longer  decorated  by  herring 
bones,  was  of  a  kind  happily  incapable  of  coming 
out  of  curl  at  all,  and  infinitely  more  becoming 
in  consequence.  Round  her  neck  was  the  string 
of  pearls  about  which  had  been  uttered  the 
sibyllic  announcement,  "Ten — three" — her  one 
concession  to  the  "Dukes."  Yet  who  can  probe 
the  evolutions  of  a  woman's  mind? — for  here  a 
strange  thing  happened. 

After  one  more  long  look  round  the  now 
packed  hall,  and  one  pause  of  thoughtful  un- 
certainty, she  put  up  her  hands  and  quietly  un- 
clasped the  necklace  and  slipped  it  noiselessly 
into  her  pocket.  After  this  she  sat  very  still, 
with  a  wave  of  warm  colour  suffusing  her  face  and 


Saints  in  Society  27 

the  long  column-like  neck,  and  beat  her  foot 
quickly  upon  the  floor  in  front  of  her  almost 
with  an  air  of  abashed  impatience.  Mrs.  Tombs, 
busy  studying  the  sea  of  faces  swelling  around 
her,  did  not  see  the  action,  neither  did  the  audience 
observe  the  small  shy  drama  of  three  seconds  that 
had  taken  place  in  their  very  midst. 

This  incident,  whatever  it  betokened,  passed 
by  without  explanation — the  girl  herself  would 
have  been  the  last  to  explain  it — and  the  murmur 
of  excited  expectation  around  her  grew  in  volume. 
The  buzz  of  talk  and  the  shuffle  of  countless  feet 
inspired  her  and  gave  her  quite  a  sense  of  ex- 
ultation, and  with  it  a  flush.  Secretly  she  did 
not  believe  that  the  Dukes  would  prove  partic- 
ularly interesting  anyhow,  and,  in  her  own  mind, 
ungratefully  called  her  friend  "a  silly  old  thing" 
on  that  head.  But  she  did  think  there  might 
be  uniforms,  such  as  the  soldiers  wore  on  Jubilee 
Day.  Above  the  bare  platform  the  high  walls, 
painted  green,  stretched  up  into  space  with  great 
glass  globes  occurring  at  intervals,  and  on  it 
there  were  a  table,  a  glass  of  water,  and  several 
extremely  hard-looking  chairs.  Arid  enough,  but 
to  her  now  fraught  with  great  issues. 

When  the  hall  was  quite  full,  and  at  last  the 


s8  Saints  in  Society 

baize  doors  opened  and  the  chairman,  a  local 
celebrity  with  a  bald  head,  a  watch  chain,  and 
the  smile  of  a  far  stage  of  hysteria,  came  in  with 
her  husband  and  the  "Dukes,"  she  had  no  eyes 
for  them  at  all,  for  at  that  identical  moment 
Stillingfleet  was  leading  Veronica  into  the  middle 
of  the  hall  and  placing  her  in  the  first  seat  to  the 
right  hand,  opposite  Chloris  and  Mrs.  Tombs. 

It  was  the  very  first  of  such  visions  that  Clo 
had  ever  seen,  and  with  open  mouth  she  sat  at 
gaze.  The  chairman  was  introduced  sheepishly, 
spoke  himself  more  sheepishly,  and  introduced 
Mark  Hading,  who  was  not  at  all  sheepish.  Things 
were  said,  formalities  accorded,  and  Mark  began 
to  speak.  Clo  heard  his  voice,  but  not  his  words. 
He  was  forgotten. 

Veronica  sat  leaning  back,  her  furs  half  off, 
looking  like  a  bit  of  lightning  that  had  suddenly 
strayed  into  a  mud  heap  by  mistake.  All  around 
her  were  serried  ranks  of  dusky  faces  and  duskier 
clothes:  white,  awful,  hopeless  faces,  of  the  un- 
employed, the  drunken,  the  weary,  the  stupid. 
They  were  mostly  men,  and  they  all  had  the  look 
of  set  purpose  that  grows  on  a  face  whose  sole 
doom  is  blind  misery.  There  was  not  a  smile  as 
Mark  began.  They  even  looked  at  him  grimly 


Saints  in  Society  29 

as  if  incapable  of  expecting  too  much,  after  such 
years  of  hope  deferred. 

Against  such  a  background  Vera's  clear-cut 
cold  simper  shone  with  a  startling  radiance. 
Her  white  neck  gleamed  with  the  emeralds  and 
pearls  set  in  old  silver  that  she  wore  at  dinner, 
and  the  peach  colour  of  her  dress  caught  the 
light  and  looked  like  flame  against  the  dark 
sables  heaped  round  her.  She  wore  large  jewels 
in  her  ears,  and  her  sweep  of  red-brown  hair 
rolled  back  from  her  face  in  imitation  of  Emma 
Hamilton  as  "  Bacchante  "  added  to  her  singu- 
larity of  appearance. 

She  was  watching  Mark  intently,  but  the 
habitual  mockery  of  her  expression  gave  her  no 
softening  grace;  and  her  already  high  enough 
colour  heightened  by  a  touch  of  rouge,  in  this 
bald  glare  of  gas-lights  shaded  only  by  wire  frames, 
added  to  her  appearance  of  utter  unreality. 
Sometimes  her  high-bred  indifference  to  her  kind 
led  her  into  absolute  bad  taste.  It  had  done  so 
to-night.  Selfishness  persisted  in  often  reaches 
exactly  the  same  goal  as  pure  ill-breeding.  No 
vulgar  chorus-girl,  hardened  to  strangers'  coarse 
comment,  could  have  displayed  her  shoulders 
and  gems  with  worse  effect  than  did  this  Earl's 


30  Saints  in  Society 

daughter   in   the   presence   of  fourteen  hundred 
tragic,  starvation-haunted  men. 

But  to  Clo  she  was  perfect  beauty,  the  perfect 
model.  For  half  an  hour  she  hardly  saw  a  single 
other  face.  When  at  last  she  did  look  away  she 
found  her  husband's  voice  was  raised  and  that 
a  change  had  come  over  the  faces  of  his  audience. 
Eager  now,  they  were  straining  to  listen  to  his 
words,  which  were  pouring  out  in  a  fiery  flood, 
hardly  as  though  it  was  he  that  spoke,  but  some 
immortal  voice  within  him.  He  was  practical 
enough  in  all  conscience.  His  illustrations  were 
homely,  and  his  word  pictures  almost  inspired  in 
their  simplicity ;  they  understood  him  to  a  man ; 
one  could  see  that.  But  he  had  more  to  offer 
than  sympathy.  He  gave  daring  suggestions, 
yet  things  not  without  reason:  he  tackled  the 
questions  of  health,  of  bread-winning,  of  home- 
keeping,  of  alien  immigration  and  its  results — 
and  its  remedy ;  he  spoke  of  education,  of  hous- 
ing, of  city-making,  of  the  rearing  of  citizens,  of 
the  curse  of  monopoly.  He  was  by  turns  humor- 
ous, inspiring,  pathetic,  declamatory,  indignant 
— once  furious ;  that  was  when  he  came  to  mono- 
poly and  the  "  accursed  rich,"  who  grind  the  face 
of  the  poor.  Then  suddenly  he  turned  to  religion, 


Saints  in  Society  31 

and  spoke  of  it  calmly  and  critically,  first  as  we 
see  it  to-day,  then  as  it  should  be.  He  talked  of 
all  the  churches,  one  after  the  other,  and  gave 
them  a  brilliant  review,  not  without  some  stings, 
but  by  no  means  in  the  howling  demagogue  spirit, 
rather  with  a  large  gentleness.  Then  he  spoke 
of  Christ,  quite  naturally,  as  one  would  speak  of 
some  one  present.  He  did  not  appear  to  feel  the 
characteristic  English  embarrassment  at  the  men- 
tion of  that  mighty  Name,  and,  as  is  only  natural, 
neither  in  turn  did  his  audience.  It  was  a  gospel 
of  hope.  It  was  capable  of  inspiring  even  the 
hungry,  and  that  means  more  than  eloquence,  it 
means  the  giving  of  the  heart.  Mark  gave  his 
heart  that  night  and  won  the  people's  entirely. 
When  he  sat  down  there  was  a  huge  thunder  of 
applause  that  seemed  as  though  it  would  never 
cease.  Clo  stopped  her  ears  once,  it  absolutely 
frightened  her.  Her  heart  was  beating  fast. 
She  saw  her  husband  in  a  new  light.  He  seemed 
transfigured,  and  the  beauty  of  his  stern  features 
in  the  warmth  of  that  radiance  struck  her  as 
something  she  had  never  really  noticed  before. 
She,  like  the  people,  was  immensely  moved. 
She  felt  proud  to  be  his  wife,  yet  conscious  for 
the  first  time  that  she  had  been  a  discontented, 


32  Saints  in  Society 

slovenly  wife  to  him,  as  indeed  she  had.  She  felt 
a  new  sense  of  possibilities  opening  to  her,  as 
though  the  world  had  grown  suddenly  larger. 

Even  the  "Dukes"  were  taken  aback.  She 
saw  Lord  Henry  leaning  forward  gazing  straight 
at  Mark's  passionate  face  towards  the  end  of  the 
speech,  a  look  in  which  the  Listower  smile  for 
once  was  not.  She  saw  the  rather  stolid,  ruddy, 
clean-shaven  countenance  of  Sir  Samuel  Crawshay 
watching  him  intently  without  a  movement,  an 
attitude  far  more  complimentary  than  applause; 
and,  when  it  was  all  over,  all  these  men  conferring 
eagerly  together,  while  the  chairman  said  bland 
nothings  to  space,  and  men  in  the  gallery  shouted 
questions  and  suggestions  in  hoarse,  rough  voices. 

Then  others  spoke,  among  them  Vade.  But 
Vade  was  in  full  evening  dress  and  was  received 
less  kindly.  There  were  sundry  grumblings  and 
mutterings  during  the  whole  of  his  speech.  So 
does  the  ignorant  mind  rely  on  the  obvious,  to  its 
own  misleading.  For  Lord  Henry  alone  in  the 
room  that  night  had  the  power,  means,  and 
definitely  formed  intention  to  do  anything  real 
for  these  hundreds  of  miserable  men;  he  alone 
held  the  purse-strings,  the  influence,  the  know- 
ledge for  that  end.  Yet  he  was  hissed  for  his 


Saints  in  Society  33 

shirt  front  and  his  inherited  smile.  You  have 
to  do  private  theatricals  to  the  British  public  to 
get  its  ear.  Hading,  in  an  old  common  overcoat, 
a  hideous  tie,  and  dull  boots,  represented  the 
"  working-man  "  in  spite  of  his  Dante  face ;  Hading 
was  rough  and  blunt  and  hot-worded  and  shabby. 
The  fact  that  he  was  known  to  be  a  printer  was 
of  less  importance.  Had  he  dressed  like  Lord 
Henry  he  would  have  had  little  more,  if  any 
more,  chance;  while  Lord  Henry  in  Hading 's 
clothes,  robbed  of  that  ancestral  smirk,  would 
have  claimed  some  sincere  respect. 

During  the  evening  Stillingfleet  came  down 
from  the  platform  and  talked  to  Veronica  in 
whispers,  and  a  woman  beyond,  half-hidden  by 
a  tall  screen,  who  had  been  up  to  this  employed 
in  watching  her  opportunity,  now  came  up  and 
joined  them.  This  was  Stillingfleet 's  wife,  a 
short,  "pepper-and-salt"  coloured  woman  of 
dumpy  figure,  with  a  square-looking  toque  and  a 
general  appearance  of  spotted  veil,  fringe-netted 
hair,  mediocrity  of  skirt,  and  blatantly  good  boots, 
which  can  only  be  described  as  "  lady-like."  She 
looked  middle-aged  against  Stillingfleet,  who  was 
rather  a  dandy  type  naturally,  a  trait  heightened 
by  his  having  as  his  secret  model  the  wax  dummies 

3 


34  Saints  in  Society 

in  tailors'  windows.  He  presented  her  to  Lady 
Veronica  Vade,  who  managed  to  give  her  as  near 
a  cut  as  a  bow  can  be,  so  that  even  she  with  her 
love  of  the  great  felt  the  lash.  Apparently  un- 
moved, she  drifted  over  to  Chloris,  and  forcing 
herself  into  a  seat  at  her  side  introduced  herself, 
and  began  a  patronising  comment  on  Mark's 
success. 

Clo  was  enough  of  a  London  girl  to  feel  and 
resent  the  patronage.  She  retired  into  one  of 
her  sulkiest  expressions.  But  Mrs.  Stillingfleet 
proceeded  doggedly,  in  her  thin,  nasal  voice : 

"That  remark  of  your  husband's  was  quite  the 
thing  about  monopoly,"  she  said.  "I  under- 
stand these  things,  you  see ;  I  Ve  known  all  about 
them  for  years — of  course,  naturally  I  do,  my 
husband  being  in  the  advantageous  position  he  is." 

Clo  assented  coldly. 

"Of  course  his  position  is  particularly  good, 
you  see,"  Mrs.  Stillingfleet  said.  "He  is  ad- 
mitted to  the  friendship  of  all  the  Earl's  family, 
and  made  much  of  in  every  way." 

"I  see  he  is,"  said  the  girl,  watching  Vera's 
coquettish  dallyings  with  scornful  interest. 

"  Oh,  you  only  see  part  of  what  goes  on  every 
day  of  our  lives,"  persisted  the  dreary  snob  in 


Saints  in  Society  35 

her  mean  voice,  eager  to  tell  yet  trying  to  con- 
vey her  information  in  an  airy  manner,  as  though 
peers  were  her  daily  companions.  "  Mr.  Stilling- 
fleet  has  extraordinary  influence  in  that  set.  He 
can  help  your  husband  ever  so  much,  if  he  likes." 

"Oh,  I  don't  think  Mark  needs  it,"  said  Clo, 
coldly;  "he  's  clever  enough." 

"That  may  be,"  said  the  snob,  "but  in  this 
world  influence — influence  is  more  than  brains. 
Much  more.  Your  husband  will  find  he  must  get 
influence  if  he  's  to  rise." 

But  Clo's  attention  had  gone  elsewhere. 

During  Lord  Henry's  speech,  the  murmurs  of 
discontent  from  every  side  had  grown  from  a 
low,  long-drawn  rumble  to  a  swelling  wave  of 
sound,  and  upon  the  rapidly  whispered  advice 
of  Stillingfleet,  now  back  on  the  platform,  and 
the  rather  timorous  chairman,  he  ceased  suddenly, 
and  met  a  roar  of  abuse — vague  rudeness  and 
silly  personalities  enough,  but  not  pleasant  in  the 
face  of  the  overwhelming  numbers  of  the  attack- 
ing party.  People  in  the  front,  the  more  re- 
spectable members  of  the  community,  hurriedly 
got  up  and  swayed  about  uncertainly,  and  some 
chairs  fell,  creating  a  sense  of  disturbance.  The 
chairman  was  waving  his  hands  and  visibly 


36  Saints  in  Society 

speaking  if  you  watched  his  mouth,  but  not  a 
word  could  be  heard,  though  the  din  was  half  of 
it  a  kind  of  grim  fun  and  only  half  really  bitter. 

A  haggard,  lowering-looking  fellow  to  the  right, 
who  had  made  one  or  two  illogical  objections 
during  the  course  of  Mark's  speech,  in  a  deter- 
minedly insolent  voice,  now  got  up  and  worked 
his  way  over  to  where  Veronica  was  standing, 
bewildered  by  the  suddenness  of  the  change. 
Leaning  close  to  her  face  he  spumed  forth  a  hor- 
rible insult  on  her  appearance,  her  evening  attire, 
her  manner.  The  words,  some  of  them  so  bad 
as  to  convey  no  meaning  to  her,  were  accom- 
panied by  gestures  too  clear  to  escape  interpre- 
tation. Gasping  in  real  terror  she  shrank  back, 
to  find  a  tall,  shabby  girl  of  the  coster  class,  or 
almost  that,  pushing  in  front  of  her  almost  rudely, 
and  clutching  at  her  dress  with  one  hand  whilst 
she  faced  the  bully. 

"Call  yourself  a  man,  do  you?"  she  absolutely 
shouted,  her  eyes  flaming  like  green  stars.  "  Go 
along  with  you!  You  cad — insulting  a  lady!  " 

"  Lady,  is  she?"  he  sneered.     "  She  's  a " 

"  She  's  my  friend.  You  be  quiet,  Jim  Balls. 
I  know  you.  Thought  you  was  a  gentleman. 
Bah!" 


Saints  in  Society  37 

"  Did  n't  know  Mark  Hading's  wife  had  friends 
like  that.  Knew  she  was  n't  no  angel,  a  dressy, 

play-going  little  minx.     But " 

He  was  going  to  say  more,  but  Clo,  without 
more  ado,  suddenly  stepped  forward,  seized  his 
thin  sloping  shoulders  in  her  two  large  firm  hands, 
and  gave  him  a  violent  push  from  behind  with 
all  her  might,  sending  him  whirling  and  stumbling 
among  the  crowd  in  sheer  surprise ;  then  clutching 
Vera's  sables  she  dragged  them  roughly  over  her 
bare  neck  and  jewels  and  clasped  them,  and  half 
pulled,  half  pushed  her  to  the  door,  before  either 
of  them  realised  that  the  din  was  quieting  and 
Mark  was  speaking  angrily  and  commanding 
silence  and  getting  it. 

At  this  juncture  Vade  joined  his  sister  and  the 
motor  spun  away  from  the  excited  spectators. 
Then  Veronica  said : 

"  Who  was  that  girl — do  you  know? " 
"That?     That  was  Hading's  wife." 
"Hading's    wife?     That    little    slum    person? 
What  a  drag  she  will  be  on  his  career — if  he  ever 
has  one,"  she  said,  pursing  her  lips.     "  Geniuses — 
he  is  a  sort  of  genius,  I  suppose? — always  many 
awful  wives." 


CHAPTER  IV 

[  ORD  HENRY  VADE  was  of  that  school  of 
*— '  social  reformers  who,  had  they  happened 
to  have  been  born  in,  say,  Italy,  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  would  have  been  counted  unspeakable 
villains  by  the  right-minded,  and  would  to-day 
have  ranked  with  the  Borgias  and  the  Medici  as 
something  too  unutterably  cunning  and  fascin- 
atingly wicked  to  regard  more  seriously  than  as 
the  lurid  centre  of  a  well-staged  play  with  a 
famous  actor  whose  "R's"  roll  like  the  thunder 
of  drums  to  represent  him.  But  happening  to 
be  born  in  Little  Chudleigh  Street,  Park  Lane,  in 
or  about  1865,  things  were  different;  and  his  un- 
dying tendency  to  regard  all  political  work  as 
something  like  bridge,  only  more  dangerous, 
which  you  played  with  human  cards,  or  chess 
pawns,  keeping  yourself  and  your  own  personality 
rather  in  the  background,  was  considered  by  his 
friends  to  be  highly  respectable  (as  indeed  it  was) 
if  a  little  foolish ;  the  game,  indeed,  hardly  worth 

38 


Saints  in  Society  39 

the  candle.  That,  of  course,  is  as  you  take  it. 
But  his  enemies  did  not  call  it  Borgian  or  any- 
thing so  picturesque ;  they  did  not  even  concede 
that  it  had  the  semi-picturesqueness  of  being  not 
respectable — that  is  to  say,  they  did  not  credit 
him  with  a  turned-down  collar,  and  earnest  views, 
and  noble  aims,  and  side- whiskers.  They  simply 
said  in  a  deprecating  manner  that  it  was  "  playing 
down  rather  low"  and  was  not  quite  square. 
And  one,  a  modern  Radical  of  the  newest  school, 
said  it  "was  n't  quite  gentlemanly." 

But  Vade  was  more  serious  than  he  looked,  and 
in  the  heat  and  interest  of  the  things  he  set  him- 
self to  do  was  quite  deaf  to  comments.  His 
mobile,  urbane  face  was  so  alive  with  sensibility 
that  it  was  all  the  more  annoying  that  he  never 
seemed  even  to  hear  rude  remarks ;  he  looked  so 
beautifully  easy  to  snub,  and  somehow,  when  you 
tried,  he  was  n't.  Somehow,  like  chickens,  the 
ill-bred  "dig"  came  home  to  roost,  and  the  rash 
innuendo  shot  at  him  hung  about  in  the  air  in- 
stead of  hitting  him  and  had  a  way  of  eventually 
tardily  travelling  home  again  with  the  truly 
stupid  look  of  things  returned  on  "  His  Majesty's 
service."  So  his  enemies  tried  to  forget  him. 
And  when,  a  few  years  ago,  he  resigned  his  seat 


40  Saints  in  Society 

as  Radical  member  for  a  division  of  Lambeth, 
and  went  for  a  tour  round  Africa,  they  really 
began  to  hope  they  could.  When,  a  little  later, 
he  wrote  a  rather  weak  book  —  an  edition  de 
luxe  on  antique  knockers — they  finally  decided 
the  point  and  forgot  him.  Only  the  Times  re- 
membered him,  and  even  it  raked  him  up  mainly 
to  adorn  accounts  of  social  functions,  to  which 
he  always  went  late,  smiling  sadly. 

But  he  was  not  so  idle  as  the  last  five  years  of 
his  career  would  seem  to  represent.  It  does  not 
take  you  all  your  time  to  pose  as  Beau  Nash  and 
consider  yourself  eighteenth  century ;  in  fact,  you 
may  do  that  well,  and  have  your  chambers 
decorated  in  perfect  imitation  of  the  Hogarthian 
era,  and  walk  mincingly,  and  wear  jade  scarf- 
pins,  and  carry  a  clouded  cane,  and  yet  have 
much  time  on  your  hands  for  other  things.  And 
this  man  was,  while  collecting  curios,  hunting  for 
a  Labour  candidate  of  spotless  integrity.  He 
was  working  out  plans  for  the  raising  of  the  very 
dirtiest  and  most  discontented  of  "working  men" 
into  something  useful,  self -controlled,  honourable, 
and  empire-making.  It  was  only  the  quaint  evo- 
lution of  party  terms  within  the  last  decade  that 
had  made  him  resign  the  Radical  constituency, 


Saints  in  Society  41 

though  he  had  some  thought  of  writing  a  lexicon 
on  that  interesting  phase  of  the  English  language, 
with  an  appendix,  tracing  the  history,  say,  of  the 
word  "Tory"  or  "Conservative"  from  its  an- 
thropomorphic beginnings  to  its  present  signifi- 
cance; and  the  word  "  Radical,"  like  the  inverted 
Darwin  theory,  from  its  once  fiery  Olympian 
heights  to  its  consequent  anthropomorphia,  when 
it  fell  into  a  new  planet.  But  his  idea  was,  after 
trying  to  speak  well  for  them  himself,  to  find  one 
of  themselves  who  would  do  it  better,  and  in  their 
own  language,  and  himself  to  supply  the  assist- 
ance, the  influence,  the  advice,  and  the  finances. 
People  will  have  fads,  and  he  was  very  rich  and 
could  play  these  games  with  impunity.  Lord 
Listower  was  a  wealthy  man,  but  Henry,  his 
second  son,  was  quite  as  wealthy,  through  his 
mother's  good  offices,  she  having  bullied  a  child- 
less sister,  who  had  married  a  millionaire,  long 
since  dead,  to  leave  the  bulk  of  her  wealth  to  this 
adored  son  in  her  will;  and  this  legal  business 
having  been  fully  arranged,  she  proceeded  to 
bully  the  childless  sister,  who  was  called  Lady 
Anne  Sheepshanks,  and  whose  chief  occupation 
was  changing  maids  and  keeping  parrots,  into  a 
premature  grave,  which  end  was  accomplished  in 


42  Saints  in  Society 

a  perfectly  respectable  manner,  to  the  accom- 
paniments of  everything  "suitable"  to  a  great 
old  lady's  death,  even  to  the  saying  "good-bye" 
to  the  "Family,"  whom,  except  Henry,  she  had 
hardly  known,  and  also  to  the  last  of  the  maids, 
whose  procession  through  her  life  had  been  a 
series  of  good-byes.  When  the  funeral  had  been 
carried  out  with  due  stateliness,  Lady  Listower 
had  come  and  overhauled  the  house,  which  con- 
tained an  astonishing  amount  of  Berlin  wool 
work  and  blue  rep,  and  had  had  the  chief  parrot 
stuffed,  in  memoriam.  The  last  maid  did  not 
need  this  treatment,  having  gleaned  fat  things 
in  the  way  of  cheques.  Thus  it  was  that  Henry 
became  independent. 

The  quest  of  a  disinterested  working-man  had 
had,  necessarily,  to  be  pursued  in  stealth  and 
silence.  He  could  not,  in  the  nature  of  him, 
be  advertised  for. 

Stillingfleet's  account  of  Mark  Hading,  on 
whom  he  had  come  quite  by  chance  when  carry- 
ing out  some  of  his  chief's  schemes  of  benevolence 
in  South  London,  had  made  Vade  prick  up  his 
ears.  He  commissioned  the  man  to  go  at  once 
and  hear  and  speak  with  Hading,  relying  on  that 
sharpness  and  even  cynicism  of  judgment  which 


Saints  in  Society  43 

made  Stillingfleet  so  useful  a  person  in  social 
work.  And  before  attending  Hading's  meeting 
he  had  taken  care  to  see  him  and  study  his  face, 
unknown  to  the  man  himself.  He  had  been  im- 
mensely struck  by  Mark's  face,  and  he  was  a  fair 
judge  of  such  indexes. 

So  that,  when  the  Islington  meeting  had  con- 
firmed his  hopes  of  Mark's  tremendous  oratorical 
powers  and  remarkable  influence  over  his  kind, 
he  felt  that  things  were  well  in  train,  and  that  the 
man  only  required  sounding,  and  his  personal  and 
private  affairs  investigating,  to  get  the  business 
started  in  real  earnest. 

There  was  no  time  to  be  lost.  A  general 
election  was  imminent  and  a  weary  Government 
tottering  on  a  throne  of  incompetence;  Labour 
questions  were  getting  really  tiresome  in  their 
agitation;  and  the  kindly,  incompetent  women 
at  home,  who  made  and  bought  endless  dollies 
and  little  woolly  clothes  and  warm  things  for 
"the  poor  creatures"  out  of  the  real  kindness  of 
their  hearts,  were  beginning  to  look  at  the  law- 
makers at  home  and  say,  "  But  why  is  it?  Can't 
something  be  done?"  like  children,  with  the  un- 
answerable, open,  direct  eyes  of  children  really 
distressed;  willing  to  give  up,  dear  hearts,  a 


44  Saints  in  Society 

jewel  or  a  dress  for  "those  poor  things,"  or  to 
join  any  amount  of  desperately  dull  committees 
(not  to  say  attend  them),  if  by  it  all  some  vague 
good  could  come  to  some  vague,  miserable  babies 
and  women  in  "the  East." 

There  would  shortly  be  an  opening  in  Wai- 
worth.  The  Radical  candidate,  Sir  Samuel  Craw- 
shay,  was  sick  of  the  sheer  impossibility  of  his 
position,  and  would  not  stand  again.  He  knew 
Vade's  ideas,  and  would  not  be  sorry  to  be  so 
peacefully  relieved  of  his  well-nigh  hopelessly  in- 
compatible duties  and  conscience.  Crawshay  was 
a  big,  stoutly  built  man,  with  curly  red  hair  and 
a  smooth-shaven  face  and  half -fierce,  half -humor- 
ous grey  eyes — a  man  whom  Heaven  had  in- 
tended for  a  really  nice  country  squire.  But 
birth  had  made  him  a  baronet,  and  some  am- 
bition and  less  judgment  had  made  a  Radical 
member  for  a  London  division  at  a  time  when  it 
was  still  rather  original  and  daring  and  wicked  to 
be  a  Radical;  and  when  all  his  cousins,  whom  he 
hated,  were  more  or  less  in  office  under  a  Con- 
servative Government,  and  he  had  a  sort  of  seeth- 
ing territorial  desire  to  spite  them,  just  as  his 
fathers  had  cheerfully  warred  with  the  same 
branch  of  the  family  in  ruder  days  over  crops 


Saints  in  Society  45 

and  pigs,  wire  fencings,  and  rights-of-way.  Or- 
dinarily, he  was  the  most  good-natured  person  in 
the  world,  and  was  loved  by  his  cronies,  with 
whom  he  was  geniality  itself;  but  he  was  too 
much  of  the  soil  for  his  line  of  politics — his  very 
curly,  sunburnt  hair  seemed  odorous  of  gorse- 
covered  moorlands,  and  the  swing  of  his  walk 
suggested  ratting  with  fine  terriers  on  a  racy, 
breezy  morning.  Even  his  time-honoured  hatred 
of  those  priggish  cousins  of  his  had  a  feudal, 
baronial  dash  about  it  that  made  the  blood 
circulate  to  listen  to.  To  bring  a  really  vitupera- 
tive hate  of  one's  own  relations  into  the  very 
shadow  of  St.  Stephen's  requires  something  of 
the  breeziness  of  blood  of  those  old  lords  of  the 
soil. 

But  now  the  day  of  the  Government  was  wan- 
ing ;  the  cousins  by  this  time  in  a  state  of  lassitude, 
mental  and  physical.  One  of  them  was  going 
about  in  a  Bath  chair  showing  bulletins  about 
himself  in  the  papers,  and  another  was  living  on 
a  patent  food  and  cutting  down  his  hours  of 
sleep,  that  is  of  professed  sleep,  and  consequently 
their  tenure  was  of  but  doubtful  possibility. 

Sir  Samuel,  who  had  fought  his  own  political 
battles  well,  felt  that  nothing  worse  could  happen 


46  Saints  in  Society 

to  the  foe  than  this  gradually  falling  curtain  of 
dubiosity,  and  had  resolved  to  go  back  to  his 
turnip  fields  for  a  year  or  two  and  snort  at  the 
enemy  from  those  broader  climes;  and  mean- 
while to  shoot  at  worthier  game. 

This  was  Vade's  chance,  and  having  found  his 
man  he  was  not  long  in  putting  him  forward  for 
election. 

He  and  Stillingfleet  went  to  see  Mark  the  day 
after  the  Islington  meeting,  and  with  him  dis- 
cussed the  offer  frankly.  Sitting  in  the  little 
parlour,  looking  over  a  back-yard  containing  a 
grey  tub  and  some  leafless  plants  stuck  in  Tate 
sugar  boxes,  the  three  men  had  had  an  hour's 
close  converse,  all  of  them  as  supremely  uncon- 
scious of  winding  the  web  of  any  special  destiny 
as  anything  male  can  be ;  it  requires  the  feminine 
instinct  to  recognise  Clotho's  loom.  A  man,  un- 
less he  is  a  poet,  will  ply  the  shuttle  in  and  out  of 
the  warp  and  woof,  yet  never 'dream  of  what  he 
is  doing.  And  this  grand  insensibility  is  called 
practical  sense.  One  of  the  finest  elements  in 
the  masculine  mind  is  its  blank  and  beautiful 
indifference  to  the  future.  Seeing  no  shadow  it 
has  no  fears.  That  spirit  has  made  England. 

To  Mark  Hading,  Vade's  proposal  came  as  a 


Saints  in  Society  47 

bolt  from  the  blue,  as  a  dream  realised.  It  had 
come  at  last — the  power  to  do,  not  merely  to 
talk.  For  the  first  few  minutes  he  hardly  knew 
how  to  speak,  so  great  was  his  joy  and  gratitude. 
For  years — ah,  what  years! — he  had  been  dumb, 
at  any  rate  in  his  own  estimation.  And  there 
is  no  suffering  like  dumbness  to  those  who  have 
anything  to  say.  He  was  thirty-eight  now,  and 
ever  since  he  was  fourteen  had  worked  and  worked, 
and  burned,  and  longed,  and  had  found  no  area 
of  self-expression.  He  was  by  trade  a  printer, 
having  worked  up  from  the  earliest  and  grimiest 
of  beginnings  as  a  "  devil"  to  the  post  of  foreman 
in  a  great  printing-house;  and  through  all  those 
long  years  of  black  and  steady  toil  his  heart  had 
flamed  with  the  fiery  sense  of  a  power  chained 
within  him,  a  capacity  for  doing  and  daring  for 
his  fellows  which  it  seemed  could  never  find  its 
wings  and  bear  him  out  of  the  sordid  drudgery  of 
the  printing-office  to  a  wider  field  of  men  and 
things. 

In  the  earlier  agonies  of  his  twenties,  when  the 
mighty  power  struggled  within  him,  and  the 
cramping  poverty  of  his  daily  work  had  eaten 
into  his  very  soul,  for  he  then  earned  very  little, 
and  had  a  drunken  mother  to  keep,  he  lost  all 


48  Saints  in  Society 

hope  for  a  time  and  had  ranked  himself  with 
atheism,  the  bald,  obvious,  almost  childishly 
naive  atheism  of  the  very  young  and  the  very  un- 
lettered. Going  to  and  fro  to  his  work  in  mud  and 
fog  and  rain,  badly  fed,  poorly  shod,  stung  with  a 
sense  of  bitter  though  vague  injury  against  social 
conditions,  and  sometimes  with  a  nobler  sense  of 
a  wish  to  alleviate  some  of  the  misery  he  daily 
saw  around  him,  and  yet  conscious  of  unutterable 
limitations,  he  passed  through  a  mill  of  suffering 
for  years,  through  which  many  less  gifted  than 
he  are  daily  passing — the  suffering  of  dumbness. 

Then,  in  a  great  heave  of  sheer  despair,  when 
the  miserable,  degraded  home  and  the  hopeless 
mother,  his  then  poor  health  and  toiling  days 
made  the  world  seem  well-nigh  impossible,  he 
had  joined  a  struggling  night  class  for  the  small, 
pathetic  study  of  something — 'a  little  nightly 
meeting  of  men,  beyond  the  miserable  grind  for 
bread  which  was  dragging  them  down  to  animal 
existence.  An  older  comrade  who  had  joined 
recommended  this  to  him,  and  he  had  joined 
partly  to  avoid  the  awful  home-going  at  night 
and  its  alternative,  the  public-house ;  and  partly 
in  the  hope  of  solving  some  of  the  raging  tumult 
of  blind  problems  within  him.  Sticking  to  this 


Saints  in  Society  49 

class,  he  had  learned  in  five  years  enough  to  open 
up  new  worlds  to  his  starved  mind,  and  as  time 
went  on  and  his  position  in  the  printing-house  was 
raised,  he  pursued  his  careful  course  of  self- 
education  till  he  began  to  feel  the  inward  yearn- 
ing no  longer  an  agony  of  latent  birth  but  an 
exuberant  joy — the  joy  of  conscious  power. 
Then  another  influence  had  come  to  him.  One 
night  he  had  gone  home  later  than  usual  to  find 
the  light  in  his  mother's  lodging  still  burning  and 
frowsy  neighbours  hanging  like  moths  about  the 
doors  and  staircase.  He  went  in  and  up-stairs, 
hurriedly,  and  found  his  mother  lying  on  her  bed, 
purple  of  face,  gasping  for  breath,  and  by  her 
side  a  woman  with  the  calmest  face  he  had  ever 
seen,  gently  ministering  to  her  wants.  The  filthy 
room  had  been  restored  for  once  to  some  sem- 
blance of  neatness,  and  there  was  a  clean  bed- 
cover over  the  old  woman's  form,  and  some  little 
comforts  on  the  table  at  the  side,  on  which  a  trim 
lamp  was  burning. 

The  strange  woman  came  towards  him,  and, 
taking  him  outside  the  door,  had  gently  told  him 
that  his  mother  had  a  fit  and  could  not  live  many 
days.  She  explained  modestly  that  she  was  a 
Mission  woman,  and  had  been  in  the  habit  of 


50  Saints  in  Society 

visiting  his  mother  of  late,  hence  her  being  called 
in  at  this  juncture.  Her  name  was  Dorcas 
Deane,  she  said,  in  answer  to  his  question;  she 
was  a  widow. 

She  was  a  revelation  of  a  new  world  to  him. 
Her  face  was  of  that  beauty  which  is  without  any 
connection  with  material  things;  it  was  as  in- 
describable as  the  pale  light  in  the  east  that  conies 
before  the  dawning — the  light  that  shone  on 
Mary  Magdalene  when  she  went  her  spice-laden 
way  to  the  garden  grave. 

It  was  a  face  which  bore  in  it  a  pale  candle  of 
the  Divine,  and  as  such  it  arrested  the  heart  so 
that  the  mind  forgot  to  criticise.  In  mere  out- 
ward description  it  was  an  oval  face — rather  a 
long  oval — with  features  of  a  general  straightness 
and  simplicity,  but  not  remarkable  in  themselves, 
save  the  pure,  gently  compressed  mouth  and  the 
rather  deeply-set  dark  hazel  eyes  under  a  brow 
clear  and  calm  and  wide.  She  had  dark  brown 
hair,  plainly  lifted  back  from  her  forehead  and 
neatly  knotted,  and  she  wore  a  closely  fitting 
bonnet,  like  a  nurse's,  and  a  plain  grey-cloaked 
costume  or  deaconess's  habit.  She  was,  frankly, 
a  humble  woman  as  to  birth  and  education,  and 
possibly  thirty  to  thirty-five  years  old.  But 


Saints  in  Society  51 

there  was  over  her  calm  features  an  expression, 
an  all-pervading  aroma,  as  it  were,  of  such  tender- 
ness, such  innocence,  such  perfect  purity  and 
grace  that  she  gave  an  impression  of  something 
transparent,  lighted  from  within  by  a  radiance 
not  of  this  world. 

She  seemed  to  bring  order  and  a  calm  wisdom 
in  her  very  footsteps.  Her  entrance  into  a  room 
could  restore  by  its  very  influence  a  sense  of  the 
right  balance  of  things;  storms  and  imagined 
injuries  faded  and  sank  before  the  touch  of  her 
kind  hand,  had  often  done  so  in  her  ministrations 
amongst  her  miserable  little  flock ;  gutter  children 
quarrelling  would  drop  their  eyes  before  her 
tender,  accusing  look,  and  great  shameless  women, 
ablaze  with  some  street  feud,  would  look  depre- 
catingly  and  subside  from  screams  to  an  awkward 
mutter  when  her  clear,  soft  voice  broke  on  their 
heated  storms  like  the  calm  sound  of  clear  waters 
plashing  in  a  thirsty  land. 

To  Hading  she  was  a  spirit  of  balm  in  the  midst 
of  the  confusion  of  his  miserable  home.  And, 
during  the  following  nights  and  days,  when  his 
wretched  mother  lay  struggling  for  release,  it 
was  Dorcas  who  brought  peace  to  the  tumult  and 
order  to  the  place.  When,  at  the  last  hour,  the 


52  Saints  in  Society 

sinful  creature  she  tended  spoke  to  her  and  asked 
for  comfort,  she  gave  it  in  words  so  simple,  so 
priest-like,  so  certain  in  their  absolute  hope,  that 
Hading,  who  was  by,  and  hearing  her  message  in 
the  light  of  her  deeds,  knew  for  the  first  time 
what  the  religion  of  Christ  meant,  and  what  it 
could  mean  to  himself  and  others. 

After  his  mother's  death,  he  did  not  lose  sight 
of  this  new  friend,  and  from  her  counsel  and 
prayers  there  grew  in  him  a  desire  for  a  religious 
life,  a  higher  strength,  such  as  she  seemed  to 
possess.  In  his  curiosity  to  know  the  secret  of 
her  power — and  Mark  had  always  adored  power 
of  any  sort — he  had  himself  learned  the  secret,  and 
from  that  day  forth  his  long-tied  tongue  was 
loosed  and  his  glorious  hidden  genius  leaped  forth, 
loosened  from  its  bonds  by  the  great  hand  of 
that  Force  which  sets  free  the  captive  and  breaks 
the  gates  of  brass. 

From  that  time,  as  a  Christian  Socialist,  he 
worked  incessantly  for  others  in  the  free  time  his 
trade  allowed  him.  He  quickly  became  known 
to  Labour  workers  and  trades-unions,  and  for  the 
sheer  fire  of  his  eloquence  got  engagements  to 
speak  on  platforms  of  various  sorts,  in  more 
and  more  abundance  till  he  was  obliged  to 


Saints  in  Society  53 

resign  his  printing  work  and  take  to  this  career 
entirely. 

He  had  married,  a  year  after  his  mother's 
death,  the  daughter  of  his  old  night-school  com- 
rade, with  whom,  as  such  men  will,  he  had  fallen 
suddenly  and  violently  in  love,  though  the  girl 
was  a  child  to  him  and  utterly  unable  to  com- 
prehend his  aims  and  character. 

His  idea  was  to  found  a  comfortable  home,  and 
vaguely  he  wanted  a  woman  unconnected  with 
his  work  and  wishes  to  preside  over  it.  Strong 
men  often  deeply  resent  women's  assistance, 
especially  if  those  women  are  their  wives.  Some 
instinct  of  this  sort  had  drifted  Dorcas  Deane  out 
of  his  vision  when  thoughts  of  marrying  had 
come  to  him — the  very  woman  who  would  and 
could  have  helped  him.  He  wanted  to  work 
alone  in  all  his  power;  the  woman  must  sit  by 
the  hearth  and  look  pretty — he  insisted  on  her 
looking  pretty,  having  the  strong  artistic  instinct 
that  was  inseparable  from  his  almost  histrionic 
talent.  He  forgot  that  she  might  find  that  oc- 
cupation dull.  Even  ignorant,  selfish  girls  can 
be  bored.  And  Chloris  was  bored,  miserably  so. 
She  had  never  been  in  earnest,  and  she  con- 
sidered such  a  state  of  mind  most  stupid.  Con- 


54  Saints  in  Society 

sequently  the  unhappiness  of  the  marriage  was, 
in  many  ways,  beginning  to  be  felt  by  both  of 
them,  in  many  a  little  strain  and  tug,  in  Clo's 
frank  irreligion,  in  her  slovenly  ways  and  her 
longings  for  the  squalid  gaiety  of  her  world,  when 
Vade's  proposal  had  come  in  all  its  wonder. 

The  little  house  the  Hadings  lived  in  was 
Mark's— he  was  already  a  householder  in  the 
place  he  hoped  to  represent.  And  after  the  first 
few  days  of  delirious  excitement  following  the 
proposal,  and  the  tumult  of  fre*sh  plans  and  busi- 
ness arrangements,  he  had  to  set  about  making 
room  in  his  little  dwelling  for  wider  demands  of 
his  coming  life. 

There  were  only  six  rooms  in  the  house,  and  of 
these  Dorcas  Deane,  their  lodger,  occupied  two. 
She  would  have  to  go,  said  Mark,  to  make  space 
for  his  new  business,  and  to  allow  a  room  for  him 
to  see  people  in. 

Clo  pouted. 

"Are  many  horrid  men  coming  here?"  she 
said  ungraciously.  She  hardly  realised  in  the 
least  degree  what  Vade's  designs  might  mean  to 
both  her  husband  and  herself. 

"  There  will  be  much  to  do,  and  I  shall  have  to 
see  a  great  many  people,"  he  answered.  "  I  must 


Saints  in  Society  55 

have  a  room  to  see  them  in.  A  great  work  is 
before  me,  and  I  shall  need  to  be  much  occupied, 
little  Flower,  so  you  must  try  to  help  me  in  every 
way  and  be  a  good  girl." 

"  I  shall  hate  saying  good-bye  to  Mrs.  Deane," 
said  the  girl.  "  She  does  preach,  but  she  's  kind. 
But  still,  if  you  're  going  to  be  grand  and  go  into 
Parliament  and  all  that,  I  suppose  I  must  put  up 
with  lots  of  changes.  Shall  I  have  nicer  clothes? 
And  can  I  have  a  new  hat?  There  's  a  big  green 
one  I  saw  covered  with  lovely  feathers;  and 
there  's  other  things  I  want  too,  any  amount. 
Some  earrings,  for  one  thing — not  old  hair  things 
like  Mrs.  Tombs's,  but  bright  jewels  all  glittering, 
like  that  lady's." 

"Oh,  my  dear,"  he  said,  a  little  sadly,  "you 
shall  have  the  best  I  can  give  you  as  soon  as  I  can 
manage  it.  Try  to  be  patient:  try  to  think  of 
the  work  I  shall  be  able  to  do  for  others  and  help 
me  to  accomplish  it.  In  good  time  I  hope  to 
give  you  what  you  seem  to  love  so.  But  just 
now  can't  you  think  for  those  who  suffer  and  are 
sad?  Can't  you  put  self  aside  for  this  grand 
future  of  doing  good?" 

But  Clo  sighed  and  shrugged  and  picked  up 
a  half -penny  magazine,  a  periodical  which 


56  Saints  in  Society 

informed  her,  among  other  things,  how  to  get  a 
husband,  how  to  make  a  dress  for  ten  shillings, 
how  to  make  a  dressing-table  out  of  a  packing- 
case  and  some  Nottingham  lace;  what  to  say  at 
an  evening  party;  where  to  sell  postage  stamps, 
and  hints  on  bee-keeping;  also  how  to  keep  her 
hair  on — the  last  not,  perhaps,  totally  unnecessary 
advice  to  the  readers  of  the  bewildering  journal 
in  question.  But  when  Mark  had  gone  out,  the 
spirit  that  fell  upon  her  at  the  Islington  meeting, 
when  his  noble  words  had  stirred  her,  in  com- 
bination with  the  mass  of  sad  faces  she  saw  so 
eagerly  listening,  came  to  her  again,  and  she  felt 
a  vague,  disquieting  sting  of  remorse  And 
limply  picking  up  a  hearth-brush  she  went  and 
swept  up  the  cinders  choking  the  grate  as  a  first 
faint  little  dole  to  conscience. 

If  Mark  was  to  do  great  things  she  would  try 
to  do  things,  too;  but  old  habits  die  hard,  and 
she  sighed  as  she  brushed  the  dirty  grate  and 
felt  herself  so  far  behind  her  leader. 


CHAPTER  V 

IF  you  buy  a  slum  girl  a  new  hat  and  get  her  to 
wash  her  face,  and  then  bow  to  her  in  the 
street,  you  may  in  course  of  time  get  her  to  see 
with  you  the  eternal  verities.  Most  reformers 
commence  operations  in  reverse  ratio.  You  will 
find,  from  Savonarola  to  an  Albert  Hall  mission, 
that  the  professional  good  will  expect  from  the 
penitent  world  a  vast  sacrifice  of  all  the  little  gods 
to  make  room  for  the  One,  and,  moreover,  for  that 
sacrifice  to  be  instantaneous.  Which  is  unrea- 
sonable. Savonarola  made  the  Venetian  dames 
throw  down  their  jewels  upon  conversion;  the  wily 
Romans  who  brought  Christianity  to  England's 
shores  did  otherwise.  Do  we  not  owe  Valentine's 
Day  to  that  very  wiliness? — a  pagan  festival  not 
sternly  vetoed  but  renamed  Christian?  Half  the 
Christian  symbols,  from  mistletoe  to  plum  pud- 
dings, as  every  one  knows,  are  pure  pagan  re- 
christened.  So  the  first  missioners  of  England 
weaned  that  little  island  gradually  from  its  follies, 

57 


58  Saints  in  Society 

rather  than  demand  a  dramatic  and  practically 
impossible  surrender  on  the  "  stand-and-deliver 
system." 

On  Chloris  Hading  a  dim  sense  had  begun  to 
dawn  that  there  was  perhaps  an  outer  sphere 
beyond  the  interminable  drab  streets,  varied  by 
music-halls  and  public-houses,  that  made  up  her 
world.  Of  course  it  was  very  vague,  and  it  was 
only  now  and  then  clear  enough  to  be  even 
passingly  conscious.  And  of  course  she  knew, 
and  had  always  known,  that  there  was  a  land 
where  the  ladies  in  fashion  pictures  lived,  those 
very  smiling  ladies  with  such  wonderfully  curved 
figures ;  and  of  course  the  music-halls  showed  her 
ladies  of  real  beauty  and  aristocracy — ladies  who 
had  reached  the  summit  of  being  photographed 
smiling — more  than  smiling — on  picture  post- 
cards. Higher  than  that  (or  wider)  you  could 
hardly  go  in  one  way.  Yet  just  a  few  of  these 
goddesses  sometimes  descended  from  Olympus 
and  lived,  when  they  had  any  fixed  abode,  in 
Clo's  neighbourhood,  and  she  knew  that  even 
they  came  down  to  a  very  mundane  level  in  such 
trifles  as  being  short  of  money  for  rent,  and  in- 
clined to  bargain  at  street  stalls,  and  to  be  glad 
of  a  meal,  and  so  on.  So  that,  as  a  fairly  pro- 


Saints  in  Society  59 

sperous  working-man's  wife,  she  had  even  some- 
times looked  down  on  them.  But  now  she  began 
to  get  an  inkling  that  there  might  be  something 
beyond  them,  something  more  satisfying,  more 
stable,  more  intrinsically  beautiful. 

I  may  point  out  in  this  connection  that  we  have 
already  seen  that  she  was  listless  and  discon- 
tented, and  had  always  been  so.  Her  face  was 
spoilt  by  the  outward  signs  of  that  disaffection. 
Yet  sometimes  discontent  is  divine,  even  dis- 
content that  is  much  less  picturesque  than  Ham- 
let's. It  is  not  to  be  advised  to  pretty  girls,  yet 
just  occasionally  the  soul  in  the  pretty  casket 
makes  the  habit  inevitable,  if  the  soul  is  above 
the  casket's  surroundings,  that  is  to  say.  Even 
in  slums  they  sometimes  have  the  blind  yearning 
after  beauty,  in  Ruskin's  sense  of  the  word. 

Up  to  the  present  she  had  lived  her  sordid  life 
dully,  gleaning  a  certain  satisfaction  here  and 
there,  yet  inwardly  rebelling  at  something — she 
could  not  have  told  you  what.  To  her  limited 
vision  there  were  certain  things  in  the  world  that 
were  joys — namely,  new  hats,  music-halls,  bank 
holidays,  peppermints,  cheap  blouses,  and  ad- 
miration; other  things  that  were  bores  (she  had 
never  known  absolute  sorrow) — namely,  bad 


60  Saints  in  Society 

weather,  good  people,  limited  wardrobes,  duty, 
and  household  work.  And  considering  that  she 
had  married  a  good  person,  whose  means  made 
small  wardrobes  a  necessity  together  with  house- 
hold work,  and  considering  that  duty  and  marriage 
are  inseparable  (in  spite  of  America  and  modern 
romance),  she  stood  a  really  good  chance  of  being 
bored. 

But  it  was  not  only  that.  The  soul  with  any 
life  in  it  seeks  for  ultimate  joy.  And  there  were 
limits  to  the  joys  of  even  a  new  hat  with  an  im- 
mense feather:  there  were  boundaries  to  the 
glory  to  be  got  out  of  a  better  mock  pearl  neck- 
lace than  one's  neighbour's :  and  sometimes  even 
Georgie  Hicks,  acting  a  tipsy  frog  at  the  Jollity, 
sent  one  home  bored  and  cross  with  the  universe. 

Wholly  inarticulate,  Clo  was  suffering,  had 
suffered  for  a  long  time,  owing  to  this  semi-tragic 
unsatisfactoriness  of  life.  Happily  she  could  not 
express  it.  The  women  who  can  are  quite  in- 
tolerable. But  a  small  incident  helped  to  arouse 
her  hopes  of  something  rather  better  eventually 
dawning  on  her  horizon. 

A  few  days  after  Vade  and  Stillingfleet  had 
called  to  see  her  husband  she  had  met  Sir  Samuel 
Crawshay.  He  was  an  old  friend  of  Vade's,  who 


Saints  in  Society  61 

had  asked  him  to  drop  in  and  see  the  man  he  was 
taking  up.  Vade  had  said  that  the  man's  wife 
was  awful — his  epithet  was  "a  little  Cockney 
cat."  Mark  was  out  when  this  visitor  was  an- 
nounced by  a  neighbour's  child  shrieking,  "Mrs. 
'Ading,  you're  a- wanted!"  and  jumping  up  to 
the  door-knocker  and  banging  it  in  jerks. 

Clo,  who  was  busy  getting  through  some  morn- 
ing household  tasks  rather  sulkily,  came  un- 
willingly down  the  stairs  to  greet  the  stranger. 
She  wore  an  old,  washed-out  blue  cotton  blouse 
that  wanted  a  collar  and  showed  her  very  long 
and  beautifully  formed  neck  to  advantage,  though 
it  did  not  make  her  look  too  tidy.  A  shabby  old 
skirt  and  a  soiled  apron  completed  her  attire. 
She  found  Sir  Samuel  standing  in  the  little 
passage.  She  stood  still  on  the  stairs  at  seeing 
him,  while  a  dull  flush  slowly  rose  to  her  face  and 
suffused  her  neck.  She  dexterously  untied  the 
strings  of  her  apron  and  slipped  it  off.  She  had 
not  expected  more  than  a  tax-collector  or  a  man 
vending  sewing-machines,  and  here  was  a  gentle- 
man. Something  told  her  a  real  gentleman. 
Instinct  said  some  one  better  even  than  a  tailor's 
tout,  of  the  kind  who  in  gorgeous  frock  coats  and 
decorated  with  artificial  flowers  stood  outside 


62  Saints  in  Society 

tailors'   shops   and  invited   buyers   within  with 
great  insinuation. 

He  looked  up  at  her  as  she  turned  the  corner  of 
the  little  staircase,  and  immediately  removed  his 
hat.  He  saw  her  hesitate  on  the  stairs  and  came 
forward  a  little  and  affably  explained  his  errand 
— affably,  that  is,  for  him,  for  his  manner  was 
always  a  little  stolid,  and  he  had  a  way  of  looking 
at  you,  with  his  full,  grey  eyes,  out  under  his 
brows,  that  was  very  far  removed  from  gushing. 

In  that  curt  fashion  that  was  her  Cockney 
habit,  she  told  him  that  her  husband  was  out; 
but  her  voice  was  low,  as  is  the  voice  of  him  who 
sees  something  interesting  and  new  on  close  terms 
for  the  first  time  and  is  busy  with  observations — 
just  as  you  might  speak  if  you  met  the  ghost  of 
Pharaoh  and  he  asked  you  the  way  to  West- 
minster. Crawshay  looked  good-humouredly  at 
the  shy  girl  clinging  on  to  the  frail  little  hand 
rail  of  the  tiny  staircase.  He  thought  her  eyes 
were  pretty. 

"Are  you  Mrs.  Hading?"  he  said,  quite  gently, 
as  one  addresses  an  equal. 

'  Yes,"  she  said  slowly,  beginning  to  feel  a 
dim  pleasure  in  the  fact.  "  I  can  give  any  mes- 
sage to  Mark  if  you  like — sir." 


Saints  in  Society  63 

She  was  sufficiently  encouraged  to  come  down 
the  stairs  and  stand  before  him  in  the  hall.  By 
doing  so  she  observed  that  he  was  a  very  brown- 
faced,  healthy-looking  gentleman,  and  that  he 
had  a  hardened  and  "toned"  air  about  him 
through  living  in  the  fresh  air,  something  akin  to 
the  look  of  an  outdoor  plant  as  compared  to  an 
anaemic  castor-oil  weed  she  had  on  her  landing 
window-sill.  He  seemed  to  bring  some  of  the 
fresh  air  in  with  him.  The  girl,  herself  pale  and 
opaque  and  sickly-looking,  and  accustomed  to 
men  and  women  flying  her  own  sad  signals,  felt 
a  little  thrill  of  dim  envy  at  the  invading  gentle- 
man who  seemed  so  strong,  and  rich,  and  well, 
and  so  conscious  of  it  all, — and  yet  so  polite  to 
her. 

"  Never  mind,  many  thanks,"  he  said  quite 
smilingly.  "  I  will  call  some  other  time.  Will 
you  say  I  came — Crawshay — Sir  Samuel  Craw- 
shay?  Can  you  remember?" 

She  shyly  promised  to  do  so,  and  was  going  to 
open  the  door  wider  for  him  to  go  out,  when  one 
of  the  dirty  children  playing  on  the  steps,  the 
very  one  who  had  banged  upon  the  knocker,  now 
dashed  suddenly  into  the  tiny  hall,  and  made  a 
header  for  the  Mission  woman's  door,  a  constant 


64  Saints  in  Society 

refuge  of  such  gutter  cherubim.  In  her  butting 
flight  the  little  imp  unwittingly  ran  her  head 
against  Clo,  pushing  her  roughly  against  the  wall. 
Crawshay  pulled  the  child  away  by  her  arm  and 
looked  at  her  laughingly. 

"You  're  a  very  rough  little  monkey,"  he  said. 
"Do  you  call  yourself  a  little  girl?  I  call  you  a 
little  steam-engine.  You  should  n't  run  into  a 
house  like  that.  See,  you  have  hurt  the 
lady." 

"Lidy!"  said  the  child,  laughing  all  over  its 
wrinkly  little  face  and  wriggling  like  an  eel  in 
Crawshay's  grasp;  "that 's  only  Mrs.  'Ading. 
That  ain't  no  lidy!" 

"  You  've  got  very  bad  manners,"  said  he, 
pinching  her  and  letting  her  go,  at  which  she 
shrieked  with  laughter  and  danced  away  de- 
lighted. "  Poor  little  souls,"  he  said,  in  a  different 
voice,  turning  again  to  Clo,  "  one  wonders  where 
they  all  get  to,  or  grow  to.  They  're  a  terrible 
puzzle.  Do  you  help  your  husband  in  his  work, 
Mrs.  Hading?" 

Clo  blushed  quite  suddenly. 

"Why,  no,"  she  said  shamefacedly,  again  con- 
fronted with  that  vague  sense  of  self-reproach 
that  the  meeting  had  awakened.  "I  couldn't, 


Saints  in  Society  65 

you  know — could  n't  speak  to  men  about  Parlia- 
ment like  Mark  does.  And  there  isn't  anything 
else  to  do." 

He  looked  at  her  quizzically  but  kindly. 

"Why,  no,"  he  said,  imitating  her  in  a  half- 
whimsical  way,  "there  isn't — for  him.  But  I 
should  have  thought  from  the  way  the  youngsters 
play  about  your  door-steps,  and  run  in  and  out 
and  upset  you  promiscuously,  that  you  could  do 
something  for  them.  I  thought  possibly  you  did. 
Ladies  often  take  a  kindly  interest  in  such 
miserable  little  beggars." 

"Oh!  they  come  after  the  Mission  woman," 
said  the  girl;  "she  loves  them — never  tired  of 
them,  she  isn't.  But  I  don't  see  that  I  could  do 
anything  for  them."  Her  voice  sounded  half- 
defiant,  half-questioning.  He  turned  and  looked 
humorously  at  a  jumping  elf  on  the  door-step,  in 
a  torn  jacket  from  which  one  sleeve  was  entirely 
gone  and  the  other  going,  pointing  with  his  stick 
at  the  sartorial  bleakness  of  this  costume. 

"  There  's  a  specimen  of  something  to  be  done," 
he  said,  "though  it  looks  as  though  the  time  for 
doing  much  good  had  gone  by.  Don't  know, 
either,  whether  such  a  being's  father  (if  he  has 
anything  so  respectable)  possesses  a  vote.  So 

5 


66  Saints  in  Society 

don't  worry,  Mrs.  Hading.  Good-bye.  Tell  your 
husband  I  came." 

He  held  out  his  hand  and  shook  hers,  smiled  at 
her  kindly,  raised  his  hat,  and  went  away,  leaving 
behind  him  an  impression  of  courtesy  and  en- 
couragement and  healthy  good-humour. 

Clo  stood  a  moment,  thinking  deeply.  Then 
she  called  to  the  gentleman  with  the  torn  sleeve 
to  come  in. 

"Shan't,"  replied  that  worthy,  staring  round 
at  her,  arrested  in  his  antics  in  amaze  at  her  im- 
pudence in  asking  him. 

"But  I  want  you,"  she  said,  trying  to  soften 
her  hard,  curt  accents  to  coax  the  child  to  obey 
her.  "  I  want  to  do  something  nice  for  you. 
I  '11 — I  '11 — give  you  a  slice  of  bread  and  butter 
if  you  '11  come  in  for  a  minute." 

This  brought  the  gentleman,  butter  being  a 
rarity  in  those  parts.  But  he  came  mistrustfully 
up  the  stairs  to  her  little  room.  When  she  had 
given  him  the  bread  and  butter  she  searched  for 
her  needle  and  cotton  from  amongst  a  heap  of 
untidy  bits  of  sewing,  all  massed  together  with  a 
penny  novel,  a  hat,  a  paper  bag  of  bananas,  a 
card  of  boot  buttons,  and  a  grocer's  calendar,  and 
at  length  found  these  implements.  Then  she  in- 


Saints  in  Society  67 

duced  him  to  take  off  his  jacket  (an  operation 
painfully  easy  to  accomplish  since  there  was  only 
one  sleeve),  and  a  little  shamefacedly  proceeded 
to  mend  the  miserable  rag,  so  far  as  it  could  be 
mended.  The  owner,  eating  bread  and  butter, 
looked  on  in  amaze — as  much  amaze  as  a  cyni- 
cal Cockney  gutter  baby  can  be  brought  to 
show. 

"Well,  you're  a  shocker,  you  are,"  he  said, 
slowly  contemplating  her,  "a  shillin'  shocker, 
given  away  free,  gritis,  and  for  nuthin'.  Mendin' 
while  you  wait,  ladies  and  gentlemen.  Bring  in 
yer  'ats  and  coats  and  trousers — here  's  a  lidy  as 
'ull  mend  'em  all,  lightnin'  speed  g'ranteed!" 

But  Clo  stitched  on,  half  defiantly.  When  the 
dreary  garment  was  done  she  put  it  on  him,  upon 
which  he  drew  himself  up  with  a  proud  air,  pinched 
up  his  features  to  a  haughty  smile,  and  minced 
away  down  the  stairs  and  out  into  the  street  after 
the  fashion  of  the  "cake-walk"  movement,  in  a 
manner  so  inimitable  that  even  Clo  was  lured  into 
a  smile  at  the  thing's  unspeakable  genius  for 
comedy,  if  the  pathos  of  the  occasion  did  not 
strike  her  greatly.  She  was  too  used  to  it. 

"There  now!"  she  said  to  herself  proudly, 
"now  I  Ve  helped  him." 


68  Saints  in  Society 

She  did  not  say  whether  by  "him"  she  alluded 
to  Mark  or  the  sleeveless  arab,  but  she  seemed  to 
have  gained  some  inward  satisfaction  from  the 
act.  She  went  back  to  her  household  duties  a 
little  elevated  in  spirit,  that  strange  elevation  a 
charity  performed  will  bring  to  the  most  hardened. 
Two  or  three  times  over  her  small  tasks  she 
thought  of  the  brown-faced  gentleman  and  his 
courteous  speech.  He  had  seemed  to  respect  her 
and  he  had  called  her  a  "lady."  Again  she  went 
back  to  the  puzzling  question — What  was  a 
"lady"?  Was  it  her  blouse  that  made  him  say 
it  ?  She  had  known  a  lady  to  be  made  by  a  new 
blouse  before  this,  at  any  rate  in  her  own  estima- 
tion. She  went  into  the  little  bedroom  and 
looked  at  herself  critically  in  the  greyish  cracked 
mirror.  No,  it  was  not  the  washed-out  blue 
blouse.  Even  she  saw  its  disadvantages  in  this 
direction.  But  it  seemed  worth  while  to  try  to 
live  up  to  the  title.  To-morrow  she  would  wash 
a  better  one  she  had,  and  even  this  afternoon 
she  would  put  on  something  tidier,  she  told  her- 
self. But  he  had  seemed  to  take  it  for  granted 
that  a  lady  helped  her  husband  and  did  kind- 
nesses to  little  children.  That  was  queer.  That 
had  never  been  her  own  definition.  Still,  it  was 


Saints  in  Society  69 

decidedly  interesting,  because  he  seemed  a  real 
gentleman  and  so  must  know.  She  paused  once 
or  twice  over  her  small  cooking  operations,  with 
a  cooking  spoon  poised  in  the  air,  thinking  out 
this  momentous  problem.  When  she  did  so  a 
nicer  look,  a  thinking  look,  came  into  her  face  and 
softened  it.  Out  over  the  little  drab  yard  at  the 
back,  beyond  the  endless  stacks  of  little  grey 
chimneys  and  slate  roofs,  to  where  a  peep  of  real 
sky  showed  out  of  the  unutterable  dulness,  she 
turned  her  meditating  green  eyes,  trying  to  pierce 
out  the  answer  to  this  puzzle.  So  struggles  the 
little  glimmering  soul  after  a  better  light:  and 
out  of  such  blind,  squalid  gropings  comes  the 
eventual  discovery  of  aspiration,  the  best  dis- 
covery in  the  world. 

What,  then,  if  she  were  really  to  try  now  to  do 
what  this  gentleman  seemed  to  think  ladies  did? 
She  had  always  thought  ladies  did  little  more 
than  wear  artificial  pearls  and  look  scornful  and 
avoid  work.  But  his  idea  seemed  worth  thinking 
out.  She  would  try  it,  anyhow.  She  need  not 
tell  Mark,  just  at  first.  She  would  not  even  tell 
Dorcas  Deane.  Suppose  they  "preached."  If 
they  did  she  would  get  rebellious  again  and  not 
try  to  be  a  lady  at  all.  It  was  a  very  faint  little 


70  Saints  in  Society 

shoot  of  aspiration,  very  delicate  and  ready  to 
shiver  away  in  any  east  wind  of  criticism,  as  yet. 
But  she  had  the  sense  to  keep  it  secret.  You  are 
not  reared  in  cities  for  nothing.  You  learn  at  least 
a  sort  of  instinctive  caution  in  these  matters  in 
sheer  self-defence. 

So  the  next  day  this  bashful  beginner  sent  for 
another  ragged  child,  brought  her  in,  washed  her 
face,  gave  her  some  bread  and  jam,  and  mended 
some  rents  in  her  frock  while  she  talked  to  her. 
That  was  not  easy.  A  life-long  habit  of  curt 
speeches  is  hard  to  overcome.  Perhaps  a  child 
can  coax  it  away  more  quickly  than  any  other 
being.  This  child  was  a  pretty  little  girl  of  eight, 
with  a  laughing  oval  face  and  long,  straight  flaxen 
hair  and  roguish  blue  eyes.  The  sinner  thought 
herself  in  luck  to  get  jam  and  attentions  for 
nothing,  and  giggled  wickedly  and  archly,  and 
banged  her  heels  on  the  box  she  was  sitting  on 
in  ecstatic  self -congratulation.  Clo  was  mending 
her  bodice  for  her,  and  as  she  leaned  back  against 
the  grey  wall,  one  lovely  baby  shoulder  poked  up 
out  of  a  ragged  chemise,  the  creature  looked  for 
all  the  world  like  some  deathless  Greuze  laughing 
eternal  youth  and  beauty  over  a  pearly  shoulder 
down  the  shadows  of  the  years. 


Saints  in  Society  71 

"I  shall  send  Jemima  'ere,"  said  the  gutter 
seraph,  twinkling  at  the  thought,  "so  I  shall." 

"Who  is  Jemima?"  said  Clo. 

"That  's  my  pal,"  said  the  girl;  "she  's  worse 
off  'n  me.  She  have  n't  got  a  bodice  to  mend. 
Say,  missis,  you  might  make  her  one?" 

"Send  her  to  me  to-morrow  afternoon,"  said 
the  would-be  lady,  "I  '11  see  what  I  can  do  for 
her.  There  's  one  I  could  alter  for  her  if  I  tried 
a  bit." 

And  so  the  days  went  on.  Every  afternoon  or 
evening  one  good  thing  was  done  for  one  child; 
very  little  things,  but  very  useful  ones  in  the 
aggregate.  The  girl  began  slowly,  very  slowly, 
to  like  her  task.  She  heard  more  every  day  of 
her  husband's  future  work  and  hopes,  and  she 
began  to  have  a  solid  sort  of  consciousness  of  do- 
ing some  small  thing  herself  towards  that  work, 
all  the  more  solid  for  being  kept  dark  from 
everybody.  Crawshay  little  knew  the  amazing 
impetus  his  few  remarks  had  given  to  a  little 
floundering  soul! 

And  now,  as  more  money  came  to  hand  and 
their  little  household  was  not  so  pinched  for 
means  as  of  old,  the  young  wife  began  to  feel  the 
joys  of  another  sort  of  pride.  Little  •  comforts 


72  Saints  in  Society 

were  added  to  the  rooms :  there  was  a  new  sitting- 
room  carpet,  and  better  food  became  usual.  Her 
husband  gave  her  more  money  for  her  dress  and 
told  her  to  make  herself  look  "nice."  When  this 
happened  first,  for  a  moment  her  mind  flew  to 
the  possibilities  of  cheap  finery  that  his  generosity 
opened  up.  A  month  ago  she  would  have  spent 
every  farthing  on  useless  fripperies  in  one  after- 
noon. To-day  she  hesitated,  just  a  little.  She 
dressed  herself  one  fine  afternoon  in  a  cheaply 
smart  arrangement,  and  set  off  to  do  her  shopping 
with  some  importance.  She  would  have  a  very 
fine  bright  blue  blouse  trimmed  with  yellow  lace 
(two  and  eleven  three,  she  said  to  herself,)  and 
a  mock  smart  skirt,  and  a  hat  all  pink,  and  other 
joys.  As  she  turned  out  of  her  own  street  and 
entered  the  vulgar  and  busy  main  road  where  a 
great  sprawling  cheap  draper's  straddled  along 
the  wayside  as  if  let  loose  into  half  a  dozen 
separate  shops,  with  its  bales  of  flannelette  and 
art  muslin  and  oilcloth  obstructing  the  pathway, 
covered  with  flaring  tickets,  she  heard  herself 
weakly  called. 

"  Lidy!"  said  the  voice,  "  Lidy!" 

It  was  Jemima,  the  friend  of  the  Greuze  gutter 
beauty.  It  was  very  much  nearer  a  monkey  in 


Saints  in  Society  73 

appearance  than  a  child,  and  a  hat  of  which  the 
brim  and  crown  had  almost  entirely  severed  com- 
pany rested  uncertainly  on  a  tangled  head.  Out 
of  the  gaping  boots  several  cold  toes  showed. 
But  through  all  the  frowse  and  rags  one  was  con- 
scious of  a  smile,  a  really  wide,  beaming  smile. 
That  was  all.  The  creature  was  simply  contem- 
plating the  "lidy"  who  had  given  it  the  jam  and 
the  bodice  with  sincere  and  grimy  rapture.  Clo 
stopped  and  looked  at  it  meditatively,  a  look 
from  which  some  of  the  worst  defiance  had  gone, 
at  any  rate  for  the  moment.  There  was  the  magic 
word  again — lady! 

"Come  here,"  she  said  quietly,  taking  the 
child's  hand  and  turning  into  a  boot  shop  next 
to  the  showy  draper's.  A  pair  of  small  boots 
costing  a  few  shillings  were  provided  for  the 
ecstatic  Jemima  and  put  on  to  her  miserable  little 
cold  feet.  Then  from  the  next  shop  was  bought 
a  woolly  hat  and  a  little  warm  cape ;  and  dressed 
in  these  infinite  glories,  from  Clo's  purse,  she  was 
finally  dismissed  in  the  seventh  heaven,  while  her 
benefactor  passed  on — half  regretting  her  im- 
pulsive action,  half  pleased  at  having  done  it. 
But  it  precluded  the  buying  of  some  of  the  de- 
signed finery,  and  the  girl  walked  on  thinking  this 


74  Saints  in  Society 

over.  She  would  have  to  go  plain  now,  for 
Jemima's  sake.  Mark  had  often  said,  rather 
sadly,  that  he  wished  she  would  be  neat.  Well, 
suppose  she  got  something  really  plain  for  once, 
to  please  her  husband,  and  tried  that  too  along 
with  her  other  experiments?  It  would  be,  per- 
haps, what  ladies  do?  Somehow,  whenever  she 
pictured  to  herself  seeing  the  breezy,  brown- 
faced  gentleman  again,  she  always  had  an  in- 
stinctive conviction  that  she  would  like  him  to 
see  her  neat.  She  had  a  sort  of  feeling  that  big 
crimson  roses  in  a  picture  hat  would  be  lost  on 
him.  Without  knowing  it  he  made  her  want  to 
comb  her  hair  out  better  and  wash  more  care- 
fully. This  is  unromantic,  but  it  is  a  phase  of 
human  nature  and  must  not  be  omitted. 

So  she  very  gallantly  went  past  that  gaudy 
draper's,  not  without  pangs  and  turnings  over 
her  shoulder,  and  little  heart-burnings,  things 
that  have  come  to  most  women,  ever  since  Lot's 
wife,  in  such  a  tempting  case.  Oh!  there  was  a 
hat  there  all  long  trails  of  laburnum.  However 
was  she  going  to  pass  it  ?  Seven  and  eleven  three ! 
Oh!  how  hard  it  is  to  "arise  and  follow  thy 
dream"  in  the  glare  of  daily  things  and  noonday. 
The  living  fire  kindled  at  the  altar  stone  in  hours 


Saints  in  Society  75 

of  silence  flickers  but  faintly  in  the  vulgar  way 
and  all  the  glare  and  fuss  of  daylight.  It  needs 
grit  to  follow  it  then.  But  she  got  past,  sighing 
deeply  and  setting  her  teeth.  Steadily  she 
walked  on  to  where  she  knew  there  was  a  costume 
shop  at  which  cheap,  but  plain  and  tidy  "coats 
and  skirts"  were  offered  for  sale.  Resolutely  she 
entered  this  severe  emporium.  Not  without 
wistfulness  she  chose,  at  the  advice  of  the  tall 
and  black-clad  "young  lady,"  a  dark  grey  cloth 
coat  and  skirt;  neatly  braided.  She  carried 
away  her  purchase  by  a  little  leather  tag  put  on 
to  the  tidy  parcel  by  the  considerate  show-room 
lady,  and  wended  her  way  somewhere  else  and 
bought  a  very  neat  hat,  not  without  a  failing 
heart. 

Then  she  wended  her  way  home,  half  inclined 
to  cry,  and  looking  really  pretty  for  once  in  the 
womanly  grace  of  this  distress.  There  was  a 
hideous  barrel-organ  blaring  in  her  ears  from  the 
curbstone  and  the  shouts  of  street  vendors,  with 
carts  of  oranges,  and  rabbits,  and  shell-fish,  half 
deafened  her  and  made  her  head  ache.  She  had 
given  away  half  her  little  stock  of  dress  money  to 
clothe  a  wretched  child,  and  she  was  not  so  sure, 
after  all,  that  it  had  made  her  a  lady.  Perhaps 


76  Saints  in  Society 

the  gentleman  was  wrong,  or  only  in  fun?  Any- 
how, she  did  not  as  yet  feel  any  very  violent  up- 
lifting in  the  social  scale,  and  the  street  had  never, 
never  looked  so  common  and  so  ugly  and  so  rough, 
and  those  two  parcels  she  carried  contained  such 
plain,  sedate  clothes,  and  life  was  very  puzzling. 

I  once  heard  an  authority  on  such  things  say 
that  when  life  became  very  puzzling  to  you  it 
showed  that  you  were  beginning  to  solve  it.  It 
is  only  the  hopelessly  material  of  the  human  spe- 
cies to  whom  such  an  experience  never  comes: 
he  who  will  never  have  wings  does  not  trouble 
himself  as  to  the  mechanism  of  flying.  So  we 
will  presume  that  so  far  the  blinded,  groping 
good  in  her  had  won  a  small  victory — a  victory 
over  self  and  vulgarity,  a  victory  that  meant 
passing  twice  in  one  walk  the  seat  of  the  greatest 
temptation,  the  flaring  draper's,  and  not  re- 
penting. It  is  not  laughable,  that  petty  triumph 
in  a  common  breast  in  a  common  street.  It  is 
eternal  and  tremendous,  as  are  all  the  issues  of 
the  human  soul.  Happily  intentions  are  dearer 
to  God  than  results.  Otherwise  there  would  be 
no  use  for  the  flutterings  of  such  a  little  soul  in 
such  a  sordid  prison.  And  it  is  a  law  of  nature 
that  all  things  have  a  use. 


CHAPTER  VI 

'T'HE  tiny  house  would  hardly  hold  Mark's 
*  papers  and  many  visitors,  now  the  tide  of 
change  had  really  commenced,  and  the  ground- 
floor  rooms  were  quickly  vacated  by  the  Mission 
woman  who  rented  them,  that  he  might  use  these 
as  business  offices  or  something  closely  approxi- 
mating to  that.  Mrs.  Deane  had  secured  another 
apartment  in  the  same  street,  and  with  her  usual 
unselfishness  and  amiability  had  said  very  little 
about  the  matter  one  way  or  the  other,  but  had 
had  her  little  goods  removed  with  all  the  speed 
she  could  muster,  as  her  humble  part  in  the  help- 
ing on  of  the  man  to  whom  her  whole  heart  was 
given. 

Her  entire  household  stock  had  been  easily  re- 
moved for  her  by  a  neighbouring  greengrocer, 
who,  in  addition  to  moving  small  household 
effects,  sold  coal,  and  poisoned  cats — all  for  very 
small  considerations. 

77 


78  Saints  in  Society 

When  this  woman  who  had  been  such  a  true 
friend  to  him  was  going,  Mark  himself  was  out, 
but  she  came  upstairs  and  kissed  Clo,  but  re- 
fused to  say  good-bye,  as  she  said  she  would 
be  so  near  and  it  was  not  really  parting  from 
them. 

She  said  it  a  little  wistfully,  however,  though 
she  smiled.  And  the  girl  kissed  her  really  affec- 
tionately, realising  when  she  was  going  to  leave 
them  that  this  gentle  friend  was  not  so  easy  to 
lose  as  only  a  week  or  two  ago  she  would  have 
imagined. 

"  Dorcas,"  she  said  slowly,  holding  the  woman's 
hand,  "when  Mark  gets  into  Parliament  and  all 
that,  I  suppose  he  '11  be  a  real  gentleman?" 

The  Mission  woman  smiled. 

"A  gentleman  is  a  man  who  is  gentle,"  she 
said;  "he  is  that  now,  dear.  Why  do  you 
ask?" 

"Because,"  said  Clo,  rather  confusedly,  "I 
suppose  I  shall  be  a  lady,  shan't  I?" 

"  I  have  heard,"  said  the  woman,  taking  both 

the  girl's  hands  in  hers,  "that  a  lady — the  word, 

y      you  know — really  means  'loaf  giver.'     That  is, 

you  see,  the  one  who  gives  away  help  and  love 

and  kindnesses  to  others,  as  you  would  give  the 


Saints  in  Society  79 

hungry  bread.  In  that  sense  you  may  begin  to 
be  a  lady  before  Mark  gets  into  Parliament,  my 
little  child." 

"Yes,"  said  the  girl,  a  little  impatient  of  the 
preaching,  "  I  see.  The  gentleman  seemed  to 
think  that.  But  are  n't  there  lots  of  other 
things?  Of  course  I  know  I  'm  a  lady  here — in 
this  street.  But  I  mean  if  I  tried  to  be  one  any- 
where else — with  all  those  grand  friends  of  Mark's, 
I  mean,  and  the  ladies  they  know.  Like  the 
pretty  one — oh!  she  was  lovely — who  came  to  the 
meeting  that  night.  Aren't  there  other  things? 
Don't  they  talk  French  and  play  the  piano?" 

"Yes,  some  of  them.  But  some  do  not.  Some 
are  only  'loaf  givers.'  At  any  rate  that  is  the 
right  end  to  begin  at,  dear.  You  can  always 
learn  the  French  and  the  piano  afterwards,  can't 
you?  French  is  no  more  difficult  to  learn  than 
being  good,  and  sweet,  and  gentle.  In  fact,  I 
should  say,  dear,  it  was  easier." 

"  And  are  all  Mark's  grand  friends'  ladies  '  loaf 
givers '  ?  Are  they  all  kind  like  that  ? " 

"  Let  us  hope  so." 

"  Mark  does  n't  like  music-halls.  Don't  ladies 
ever  go  to  music-halls?" 

The  woman  looked  puzzled. 


8o  Saints  in  Society 

"That  I  can't  say.  But  a  true  lady  obeys  her 
husband." 

"Do  all  Mark's  friends'  ladies  obey  their  hus- 
bands, then?" 

The  woman  shook  her  head  and  smiled. 

"  Why  should  we  ask?  At  any  rate  there  are 
a  few  things  they  do  which  you  could  imitate, 
dearie.  For  instance,  all  ladies  are  clean  and 
tidy.  They  love  nice  rooms  and  neat  dress  and 
peace  and  order.  Then  they  are  very  thoughtful 
for  another  person  in  the  same  room  with  them 
— more  thoughtful  than  for  themselves.  They 
speak  gently,  they  never  shout,  or  snap,  or  jerk. 
You  can  always  tell  them  by  that  in  the  street  or 
in  any  public  place.  They  speak  the  truth,  and 
they  never  say  unkind  things;  and  they  never 
boast.  What  more  can  I  tell  you?" 

"  They  must  be  awfully  nice,"  said  Clo,  thinking 
deeply  of  all  this ;  "  I  hope  Mark  will  get  '  in '  and 
take  me  where  I  can  see  them,  that 's  all.  They 
must  be  better  than  the  lot  we  have  about  here, 
always  quarrelling  and  snarling  and  calling  each 
other  names.  Besides,  they  look  pretty.  That 
one  did  at  the  meeting.  Oh,  her  dress  was 
lovely!" 

"Yes,"  said  Dorcas,  "it  would  be,  because  she 


Saints  in  Society  81 

was  an  earl's  daughter,  and  that  was  the  right 
dress,  you  see.  For  real  ladies  dress  according 
to  what  they  are.  You  understand,  don't  you? 
It 's  that  which  makes  them  always  look  so  nice 
and  so  'right'  at  the  right  time." 

"She  did  n't,"  put  in  Clo,  eagerly;  "she  looked 
very  funny,  she  did,  sitting  there  dressed  all  like 
that  in  bright  yellow  and  jewels.  That 's  why 
Jim  Ball  was  rude  to  her." 

"Yes,  but  you  see  she  had  never  been  to  such 
a  place  before,  perhaps,  which  would  explain  why 
she  made  such  a  mistake.  She  did  not  know  how 
rough  it  would  be.  But  still,  dear,  that  is  not 
the  point.  The  point  is  that  there  are  certain 
things  that  those  who  are  really  ladies  have  in 
common  with  one  another.  And  those  are  the 
only  things  worth  copying.  You  see,  they  are 
things  that  begin  in  the  heart,  and  go  on  to  the 
habits,  and  so  change  what  was  rough  into  some- 
thing beautiful.  Lately,  I  have  observed  you 
have  been  doing  kindnesses  to  your  little  sorrow- 
ful friends.  You  have  begun  to  be  a  '  loaf  giver.' 
Why  not  go  on  with  the  neatness,  and  the  clean- 
ness and  the  daintiness?  Then  you  will  be  ready 
for  Mark  when  he  becomes  a  great  man." 

Dorcas's  persuasive  eloquence  helped  to  show 

6 


82  Saints  in  Society 

infinite  light  to  the  puzzled  girl,  and  was  all  the 
more  effective  because  the  woman  had  the  sense 
to  avoid  any  distinct  attempt  at  preaching,  or 
what  Clo  would  have  resented  as  such.  Her  tact 
won  where  means  of  missionising  on  the  usual 
lines  would  have  failed  dismally. 

And  Clo,  much  interested  in  the  new  idea,  set 
to  work  to  wash  and  rearrange  her  frowsy  hair ;  to 
reorder  the  fashion  of  her  dress  indoors,  and  to 
make  some  attempt  at  a  gentler  way  of  speech. 
All  of  which  improvements  were  very  successful, 
and  won  Mark's  praise  when  he  came  home  from 
a  busy  meeting.  And  from  that  time  she  began 
to  feel  a  conscious  self-respect  in  such  matters, 
the  first  absolute  foothold  she  had  gained  on  the 
slippery,  upward  path. 

One  day  she  was  invited  out  to  tea,  in  honour 
of  her  husband's  good  fortune,  by  her  neighbour, 
the  widow,  an  occasion  when  she  was  to  meet  the 
wife  of  another  local  magnate,  a  neighbouring 
undertaker  called  Trinder.  This  was  out  of  com- 
pliment to  Mark,  and  was  counted  as  something 
of  a  state  occasion.  Clo,  who  was  to  go  with 
Mrs.  Deane,  dressed  herself  with  care :  for  though 
well  known  to  Mrs.  Tombs,  she  felt  that  she  was 
now  going  in  a  new  capacity  on  Mark's  account 


Saints  in  Society  83 

and  must  try  to  live  up  to  the  little  ideal  she  had 
set  herself.  She,  too,  was  a  little  local  magnate's 
wife. 

So  she  put  on  the  grey  costume  she  had  bought 
on  the  memorable  afternoon  when  she  had  spent 
half  of  her  dress  money  on  Jemima,  and  the 
close-fitting,  neat  hat  procured  on  the  same  day, 
and  these  reforms,  together  with  a  general 
freshening  up  and  freer  use  of  soap  and  water, 
improved  her  wonderfully.  One  began  to  see 
that  she  was  a  good-looking  girl  in  a  way,  and 
besides  fine  eyes  had  very  good  hair,  now  it  was 
more  naturally  arranged.  She  had  always  walked 
well,  owing  to  the  Board  School  drill,  but  her 
figure  showed  to  great  advantage  in  the  close  fit 
of  the  cloth  costume.  She  was  herself  a  little 
uncertain  as  to  whether  the  change  was  an  im- 
provement or  not.  It  takes  a  little  time  to  alter 
one's  ideas  of  taste.  Still,  she  felt  one  satis- 
faction— if  she  should  ever  meet  any  of  Mark's 
great  friends  this  was  the  style  she  would  like  to 
be  found  in.  And  the  importance  of  having  now 
a  career  and  a  real  reason  for  dressing  and  do- 
ing in  a  particular  way  outweighed  the  haunting 
sense  of  finery  missed,  at  first  a  very  real  trouble. 
And  Mark  was  so  pleased  at  the  change  that  she 


84  Saints  in  Society 

could  not  go  back  now.  She  was  losing  that 
abiding  sense  of  discontent,  with  the  interest  of 
having  something  definite  to  do  and  to  live  for. 
So  she  went  to  the  party  full  of  importance  and 
pride. 

At  her  neighbour's  the  little  parlour  had  been 
made  extra  trim  for  the  occasion  by  the  joint 
labours  of  Mrs.  Tombs  herself,  dressed  in  the  check 
wrapper  and  hair  earrings,  and  her  little  work- 
house maid,  an  Abigail  who  had  been  gotten  cheap 
on  account  of  being  chipped  at  the  corners:  she 
had  lost  an  eye,  and  had  only  two  fingers  on 
one  hand,  those  on  the  other  being  covered  with 
chilblains;  and  her  hair  was  in  a  chronic  state 
of  Hinde's  curlers,  which  fell  in  hard  metal  lines 
over  her  large  bald  forehead  apparently  all  day 
as  well  as  all  night,  so  that  there  was  even  a 
doubt  as  to  the  existence  of  her  hair.  She  was  a 
hard-working  little  person,  of  a  somewhat  stern 
trend  of  character,  and  carried  her  curling- 
pinned  head  very  high  on  a  pair  of  bottle-shaped 
shoulders,  and  made  sweeping  and  fierce  remarks 
in  a  deep  voice,  none  the  less  effective  because 
she  had  very  short  legs  and  stumped  away,  after 
making  one,  like  a  small  duck  quacking  bass. 

Clo  and  Mrs.  Deane  arrived  together,  followed 


Saints  in  Society  85 

almost  immediately  by  Mrs.  Trinder,  who  had 
really  arrived  at  the  same  time  as  they,  but  had, 
on  seeing  them,  slipped  diplomatically  into  a 
little  side  door  belonging  to  the  general  dealer's 
at  the  corner,  and  waited  till  they  had  passed 
and  preceded  her.  Her  dignity  insisted  that  she 
should  arrive  the  last  of  the  party,  as  Royalties 
do. 

A  little  of  the  sawdust  from  the  general  dealer's 
floor  still  adhered  to  the  edge  of  her  black  skirt 
as  she  entered  Mrs.  Tombs's  parlour,  but  she  had 
the  presence  of  mind  to  give  it  a  little  shake  and 
say  impatiently,  "Dear,  dear!  it's  that  horrid 
carpentering  of  Mr.  Trinder 's.  The  men  are 
that  careless." 

This  remark  gave  at  once  the  impression  that 
the  cheerful  occupation  of  coffin-making  was  a 
mere  hobby  of  Mr.  Trinder 's,  equivalent  to  an- 
other man's  golf;  also  that  it  employed  a  large 
number  of  "hands" — the  highest  possible  dis- 
tinction in  that  coterie. 

Something  of  Hading's  prospects  was  beginning 
to  filter  about  the  place — it  was  now  six  weeks 
since  Vade's  step  had  been  taken — and  Mrs. 
Trinder  had  just  an  inkling  that  young  Mrs. 
Hading,  whom  up  to  the  present  she  had  only 


86  Saints  in  Society 

• 

known  by  sight,  and  rather  despised,  would  one 
day  be  as  great,  in  a  sense,  as  herself.  She  felt, 
on  these  grounds,  an  overweening  desire  to  ques- 
tion her  while  this  could  still  be  done  with  im- 
punity, partly  to  find  out  her  mental  pose,  and 
partly  to  show  her  own  superiority.  Mrs.  Deane 
she  considered  as  distinctly  beneath  the  company, 
a  mere  Mission  woman,  a  person  who  attended  to 
the  corpses  before  they  had  reached  the  dignity 
and  utility  of  being  corpses ;  the  person  who,  like 
the  doctor,  only  saw  them  part  of  their  way,  only 
indeed  as  far  as  the  crossing  of  the  bar,  after 
which  Mr.  Trinder  undertook  their  safe  conduct 
in  a  far  more  masterly  manner,  putting  such 
jobbers  to  rout  entirely. 

The  tea  was  brought  in  by  the  maid  in  metal 
pins,  and  while  a  stage-whisper  argument  went 
on  between  this  Abigail  and  Mrs.  Tombs  as  to  the 
absence  of  the  "best"  sugar  basin  and  com- 
plicated directions  as  to  where  to  find  it,  Mrs. 
Trinder  spoke  to  Clo,  studying  her  clothes  the  while 
with  a  swivel-like  eye  travelling  slowly  up  and 
down  and  around  her  unassuming  stuff  dress. 

"How  long  have  you  been  married?"  she  said. 

"Two  years,"  answered  the  ever-brief  Clo. 
Mrs.  Trinder  paused  after  this  highly  graceful 


Saints  in  Society  87 

opening  to  drink  her  tea,  her  eye  appearing  still 
over  the  top  rim  of  her  cup  and  rolling  swivel- 
wise  over  Clo's  tout  ensemble,  like  a  rising  moon 
appearing  over  a  hill-side  and  performing  slow 
capers. 

"Have  you  any  children?"  she  continued. 

"  No,"  was  the  answer. 

"Really?"  said  Mrs.  Trinder,  an  expression  of 
plain  disapproval  of  some  sort  coming  into  her 
face.  "  Has  your  husband  given  up  his  print- 
ing?" she  proceeded. 

"Yes.  Has  yours  given  up  his  burying?"  re- 
torted Clo. 

"My,  of  course  not!"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Trinder, 
indignantly. 

"No,  indeed,"  put  in  Mrs.  Tombs,  "where 
should  we  all  be  if  Mr.  Trinder  did  that,  I  should 
like  to  know?  Where  should  we  all  be  without 
him  to  bury  us  proper,  with  black-edged  cards 
and  silver  lily  of  the  valley  all  k'rect,  and  the 
best  Florentine  marble,  and  black  gloves  for  the 
company  all  found,  and  that  Christian  smile  of 
his,  and  as  reasonable  a  bill  at  the  end  of  it — 
with  a  heart,  anchor,  and  cross  on  the  bill-head, 
an'  discount  on  cash — as  a  body  could  hope  to 
have  sent  in  when  all  is  over." 


88  Saints  in  Society 

Mrs.  Tombs  did  not  mean  to  give  the  im- 
pression that  Mr.  Trinder's  bill  was  sent  in  to  the 
corpse;  she  used  the  word  "body"  in  a  familiar 
sense,  as  indicating  something  rather  less  than  a 
lady.  As  she  was  openly  addressing  Mrs.  Deane 
at  the  time  the  word  was  felt  to  be  only  fitting. 
Mrs.  Deane  smiled  gently. 

"Indeed,"  she  said,  "the  poor  speak  often  of 
Mr.  Trinder's  kindness,  and  what  he  has  many  a 
time  done  for  them  in  their  darkest  times,  when 
perhaps  the  bread-winner  has  been  taken.  If  I 
may  say  it,  I  think  God  will  reward  Mr.  Trinder 
for  his  great  goodness." 

She  said  it  gently  enough.  But  Mrs.  Tombs 
shook  her  head — she  had  a  strong  objection  to 
the  Holy  Name  and  thought  "Providence"  a  far 
more  correct  title;  while  Mrs.  Trinder  gave  a 
watery  smile  with  a  sniff  in  it,  like  a  fine  day 
with  a  nasty  wind  round  the  corners. 

But  Dorcas  had  this  in  common  with  Lord 
Henry  Vade — she  seemed  incapable  of  looking 
snubbed.  She  went  on  calmly  with  her  tea  with 
an  expression  of  serenity  far  from  what  Mrs. 
Trinder  considered  becoming  in  a  "person." 
Mrs.  Tombs,  setting  her  down  briefly  as  "Meth- 
ody,"  was  less  inclined  to  consider  the  matter  at 


Saints  in  Society  89 

all.  A  "body"  was  after  all  but  a  "body,"  and 
little  worthy  of  consideration. 

Mrs.  Trinder,  after  eating  violently  for  a  few 
minutes  and  surveying  Clo  out  of  the  corner  of 
her  pale  eye,  suddenly  and  without  the  least 
warning  plunged  headlong  into  an  account  of  the 
furniture  in  her  sister-in-law's  house,  the  beauty 
of  her  children,  herself,  her  husband,  and  the 
cost  of  her  clothes.  As  no  one  present  knew,  or 
indeed  had  even  heard  of,  the  sister-in-law  before, 
this  conversation  was  faintly  embarrassing.  Mrs. 
Tombs  alone  supported  it  by  admiring  exclama- 
tions prodded  into  the  monologue  at  intervals. 
Gentle  Mrs.  Deane  occasionally  inclined  her  head 
when  the  windy  words  seemed  to  surge  in  her 
direction,  but  Clo  looked  the  quiet  contempt  she 
now  instinctively  felt  for  this  volcanic  eruption 
of  ignorant  snobbishness.  Ladies,  she  had  heard, 
never  boasted. 

When  Mrs.  Trinder  at  last,  in  describing  a  suite 
of  "furnitchy"  of  unimaginable  price,  and  a  little 
boy's  velvet  suit  which  cost  "  Four  pound  ten — I 
tell  you  true,"  suddenly  broke  down  for  want  of 
breath,  the  hair-pinned  servant  came  forward,  and 
muttering  a  few  grunted  words,  put  the  "best" 
sugar  basin  down  on  the  table  with  a  flop. 


90  Saints  in  Society 

"Well,  what's  the  good  of  that  now?"  said 
Mrs.  Tombs,  fretfully;  "it  's  no  good  bringing  it 
when  we  Ve  done." 

This  remark  coming  exactly  in  the  place  where 
Mrs.  Trinder  had  expected  a  burst  of  awe-stricken 
applause,  her  ready  ire  was  roused.  Disappoint- 
ment stung  her,  and  very  red  in  the  face  and 
glaring  at  the  maid  she  said  loudly : 

"  That  's  a  very  lazy  girl  you  Ve  got." 

"Which  is  more 'n  your  tongue  is,"  shouted 
out  the  servant,  with  eyes  blazing  like  signal 
lamps;  "it  does  rattlin'  good  work  for  you,  I  11 
be  bound!" 

Mrs.  Tombs  looked  horrified. 

"Jenny,"  she  said,  "how  dare  you  speak  so  to 
a  lady  at  my  table?" 

"Lady  is  she?"  said  Jenny;  "there's  ladies 
here  at  your  table  as  I  would  n't  say  a  word  to 
for  twenty  best  sugar  basins.  But  I  don't  call 
them  in  the  buryin'  trade  ladies." 

"Give  over,  girl!"  cried  Mrs.  Tombs.  "Get 
out  of  the  room,  do;  I  'm  astonished  at  you." 

"Which  I  've  said  and  which  I  mean,"  went  on 
Jenny,  backing  solemnly  to  the  door.  "  Let  her 
wait,  says  I,  till  she  writes  my  epitaph  before  she 
starts  to  call  me  names!" 


Saints  in  Society  91 

With  which  she  waddled  out  and  slammed  the 
door,  leaving  the  little  company  staring  in  con- 
sternation. The  furious  and  now  speechless  Mrs. 
Trinder  was  torn  between  a  desire  to  rise  and  sail 
haughtily  for  ever  out  of  the  low  circle  of  Mrs. 
Tombs 's  friends  and  servants,  and  a  dim  but 
harrowing  uncertainty  as  to  whether,  being  the 
greatest  lady  there,  she  ought  not  to  out-stay  the 
other  two  guests.  This  raging  conflict  between 
wrath  and  precedent  shook  the  sulphur  yellow 
flowers  in  her  bonnet  and  set  a  limp  grey  bow 
wagging ;  her  pale  eyes  shone  livid,  her  thin  face 
came  out  a  dull  greyish  red,  and  her  hands  picked 
angrily  and  violently  at  her  gown.  The  silence 
was  pregnant  with  wrath  and  storm.  There  was 
an  awful  pause.  Mrs.  Deane  came  to  the  rescue. 

"Strange  that  these  little  souls,"  she  said 
gently,  "should  so  readily  fly  to  anger.  This 
eager  child,  Mrs.  Tombs,  has  lost  her  little  head 
to  think  that  she  should  be  called  idle.  You,  my 
dear  madam,"  she  continued,  addressing  the 
trembling  and  voiceless  Mrs.  Trinder,  "have 
shown  us  the  sweetness  of  patience  in  refraining 
from  uttering  a  word  when  most  provoked.  We 
thank  you  for  your  forbearance ;  it  is  a  sweet  thing 
for  us  to  see." 


92  Saints  in  Society 

Anything  less  sweet  than  the  epitome  of  ugly 
passions  in  the  mean,  fine  bonnet  before  her  it 
would  be  hard  to  find,  and  for  a  moment  the 
seething  rage  of  the  little  great  lady  seemed  likely 
to  turn  itself  on  to  the  innocent  Dorcas.  She 
hesitated  for  a  moment,  then  a  strange  thing 
happened.  Whether  it  was  the  gentle  "my  dear 
madam"  (Oh,  to  be  madam!),  or  the  cooling  feel 
of  the  soft,  calm  voice  and  calmer  spirit  pervad- 
ing the  heated  air  of  rage  and  insulted  self — 
whether  it  was  that  beautiful  grave  face,  that 
quiet  look  of  respect,  or  that  wonderful  seeing  of 
good  in  evil — or  all  these  things  together,  certainly 
the  strained  hot  eyes  of  Mrs.  Trinder  fell  a  little, 
her  breathing  calmed  down,  her  hands  ceased 
twitching,  and  her  glance  lighted  on  the  Mission 
woman  with  a  new  look  of  almost  curiosity. 
Had  she  been  sweet?  Had  she  been  patient?  It 
was  a  new  idea.  This  woman  thought  so ;  any- 
how, she  would  for  once  live  up  to  it. 

"Well,"  she  said  slowly,  and  very  low,  "  I  'm 
sure  you  're  very  kind  to  say  so.  I — I — I  s'pose 
there  's  times  when  some  of  us  must  show  the — 
the — Chri'shun  spirit."  She  faltered  a  little — 
she  was  somewhat  doubtful  yet  as  to  whether  she 
ought  to  take  praise  for  the  silence  of  that  voice- 


Saints  in  Society  93 

less  rage.  Then  in  her  poor  clouded  mind  dawned 
the  faintest  ray  of  an  idea  that  she  might  begin 
deserving  it  now.  She  turned  to  her  trembling 
hostess. 

"Don't  scold  the  girl,  Mrs.  Tombs,"  she  said,  a 
little  largely  and  pompously  it  is  true,  but  still 
with  sincerity.  "I  '11  not  remember  her  words, 
nor  blame  you,  as  is  always  a  lady,  for  them." 

Mrs.  Tombs  burst  into  tears  of  real  gratitude 
and  held  out  her  poor  old  hands  tremulously. 

"Dear  Mrs.  Trinder,"  she  said,  "how  good  you 
are!  Oh,  that  this  should  happen  to  a  guest  of 
mine!" 

Dorcas  Deane  rose  up  from  her  place  and  came 
and  kissed  the  little  widow. 

"  Let  us  all  forget  it,"  she  said.  Mrs.  Trinder,  not 
to  be  left  behind,  gave  her  hostess  a  peck  of  her 
own  which  stood  for  a  kiss  and  was  quite  as  sin- 
cere if  less  pleasant  than  Dorcas's.  And  this  gen- 
eral restoration  of  a  happier  spirit  so  glorified  the 
tea-party  that  it  went  on  till  the  end  of  an  hour 
in  the  kindest  glow  of  geniality  and  good  feeling. 

When  Clo  and  the  Mission  woman  came  away, 
the  girl,  who  had  been  very  silent,  said: 

"Dorcas,  won't  you  teach  me  to  do  those 
things,  to — to — be  like  you?" 


94  Saints  in  Society 

"Not  me — not  like  me,"  said  Dorcas,  softly, 
her  eyes  shining,  "like  the  Master,  little  Chloris. 
Come  into  my  new  room,  dear,  and  let  us 
talk." 

When  they  went  into  the  little  plainly  fur- 
nished parlour  which  the  woman  now  rented  in 
the  same  street,  the  furniture  of  which  she  knew 
so  well  and  despised  so  much,  with  its  coloured 
Scripture  pictures  on  the  walls,  and  its  ugly,  in- 
artistic texts  in  frames,  the  girl  broke  out  in  a 
protest. 

"I  shall  never  really  be  like  you,  Dorcas.  I 
could  n't  love — the — things  you  do.  I  don't  like 
that  Mrs.  Trinder,  though  you  made  her  nicer  all 
at  once.  I  know  nothing  about  goodness.  But 
if  Mark  is  going  to  be  great  and  do  great  things, 
I — I  should  think  I  ought  to  try  to  do  good 
sort  of  things,  too.  In  a  little  way,  I  mean. 
Only  sometimes  it  seems  no  good  trying — I  only 
feel  the  wish  sometimes,  then  I  don't  feel  it  at 
all." 

Dorcas  went  to  the  little  window  and  opened  it, 
showing  a  rough  wooden  window-box  from  which 
grew  up  an  ample  green  plant,  strong  and  full  of 
leaves,  climbing  its  graceful  way  up  a  little  trellis 
by  the  sides  of  the  window-sash  and  fluttering  in 


Saints  in  Society  95 

the  fresh  spring  evening  wind,  making  an  arbour 
of  the  dreary  place. 

"  Look  at  this  lovely  thing,"  she  said,  drawing- 
Clo  to  her  side ;  "  a  year  ago  in  your  house,  in  that 
box  of  rough  earth,  I  put  a  little  seed, —  such  a 
little! — seed,  and  left  it  there  in  the  quiet  sod. 
And  God  blessed  the  increase  of  it,  and  it  grew 
to  be  the  fair  thing  you  see.  So,  little  one,  that 
gentle  wish  in  your  erring  human  heart  shall 
grow,  and  bloom,  and  bear  flower." 

When  the  girl  left  her  friend  that  night,  after 
an  hour's  talk,  there  was  a  new  look  in  her  eyes 
and  less  jerk  in  her  manner.  She  spoke  more 
kindly  to  tired  Mark,  and  made  his  tea  more 
carefully,  cleared  and  tidied  the  sitting-room,  and 
made  things  look  brighter  and  cheerier.  She 
even  found  him  his  slippers,  and  asked  him 
about  his  doings,  and  begged  to  be  taught  some- 
thing of  the  complicated  political  terms  he  and 
his  friends  used  so  readily.  Mark  glowed  with 
pleasure  at  this  changed  Clo  and  spoke  to  her 
endearingly.  It  was  the  happiest  evening  they 
had  ever  had. 

And  in  a  little  back  bedroom  a  pale  woman 
knelt  by  her  narrow  bed,  saying,  "  Grant  that  an 
erring  heart  which  loves  this  man  too  well — too 


96  Saints  in  Society 

well — may  find  its  forgiveness  in  the  work  of 
helping  the  stumbling  steps  of  this  child,  his  wife. 
Forgiveness,  Lord,  for  a  wandering  heart.  Let 
me  earn  it  by  saving  her — and  serving  him." 


CHAPTER  VII 

'T'HE  sweeping  changes  in  the  man's  life  were 
*  more  dramatic  than  the  subtle  evolutions 
in  the  woman's.  She  came  in  for  the  lapping  of 
the  outer  wavelets,  the  loose  backwater  of  his 
more  stormy  stirrings.  But  he  had  actually  to 
start  afresh  on  a  new  career  of  hope  and  hard 
work,  and  very  definite  new  experiences,  and  he 
found  his  days  not  long  enough  to  crowd  in  the 
wonderful  happenings,  the  great  revolutionary 
upheavals  of  all  the  old  barriers  of  his  fettered, 
poverty-cursed  life.  The  immense  power  of  his 
talent  had  always  been  a  sort  of  unquenchable 
genius  for  belief  in  his  fellowmen,  and,  in  the 
right  sense,  in  himself.  That  belief  alone  had 
given  him  an  influence  and  sway  over  others 
which  had  at  times  seemed  almost  magical.  To 
some  extent  it  is  that  faith  in  one's  race  that  has 
given  the  sceptre  to  many  of  the  greatest  in  the 
world.  To  quote  an  almost  childish  illustration, 
Nelson  used  it  when  he  told  his  men  what  England 

97 


98  Saints  in  Society 

"expected"  of  them.  It  is  a  great  thing  to  feel 
that  a  fine  action  is  "expected"  of  you;  it  goes 
a  long  way  towards  making  it  an  accomplished 
fact.  John  Wesley  believed  in  men  enough  to 
spend  himself  in  passionate  appeals  to  them; 
Swift  sufficiently  to  rage  against,  to  castigate,  to 
lacerate  them.  Shakespeare  thought  they  were 
worth  being  Shakespeare  for,  an  immeasureable, 
infinite  compliment.  And  that  is  why  we  love 
these  men.  No  one  loves  John  Knox ;  he  thought 
too  badly  altogether  of  his  kind :  in  his  judgment 
it  required  so  many  pits  and  so  much  sulphur  that 
now  it  refuses  him  its  heart,  and  not  unnaturally. 
Mark  had  that  power  in  its  intensity.  It  had 
nerved  him  and  given  him  courage,  and  given  him 
hope  when  everything  else  in  his  life  was  un- 
speakably depressing.  It  had  given  that  won- 
derfully keen  glow  to  his  fine  eyes,  and  carved 
and  hewn  his  strong,  virile  face  to  what  it  was. 
And  the  very  hardship  and  dreariness  of  his 
surroundings  had  brought  it  out  in  stronger  re- 
lief;  since,  if  you  are  cast  in  a  desert  of  material 
things,  you  are  obliged  to  live  all  the  more  vigor- 
ously in  some  sweet  abstraction  of  your  own 
which  forms  a  glowing  Aladdin's  palace  in  the 
wild  waste  of  desolation. 


Saints  in  Society  99 

But  now  all  this  was  to  be  changed.  Here  at 
last  were  means  to  accomplish  what  hitherto  had 
been  hotly  dreamed,  violently  prayed  for,  some- 
times in  the  darkest  moments  despaired  of.  His 
fellows  sometimes  wondered  a  little  contemptu- 
ously at  the  all-pervading  atmosphere  of  Mark's 
religion.  They  had  thought  that  enlisting  on  the 
side  of  "goodness"  the  one  weak  point  in  a  really 
clever  man.  They  could  not  know  that  to  Mark 
God  stood  for  the  only  powerful  force  beyond 
himself  that  he  knew  or  had  come  in  contact  with. 
He  had  never  handled  money.  He  had  seen 
oppression,  monopoly  slave-driving,  carried  on 
by  the  power  of  money ;  and  he  had  risen  against 
these  monsters,  shrieking  indignation  in  the  name 
of  God.  It  had  been  his  one  weapon,  his  one 
power. 

But  now,  of  course,  another  force  had  come 
into  his  hands — the  force  of  wealth  and  influence, 
and  the  first  few  weeks  of  wielding  it  with  his 
unaccustomed  hand  were  weeks  of  intoxicating 
rapture.  Of  course  there  was  the  election  fight 
to  be  got  through,  but  that  was  joy  to  one  whose 
trained  sinews  and  iron  nerves  counted  fights  a 
glory;  he  had  been  imprisoned  so  long,  with  the 
fighting  spirit  wearing  him  away  with  inward 


ioo  Saints  in  Society 

tumult,  that  he  was  glad  to  plunge  into  the 
arena  and  lay  about  him  mightily  now  that  one 
had  been  opened  up  to  him  by  Vade. 

So  it  goes  without  saying  that  at  this  time  he 
was  very  busy  and  absorbed — up  early  and  out 
for  hours  on  the  business  of  his  campaign,  or 
locked  up  with  the  many  deputations  of  men  who 
now  seemed  to  be  eternally  flooding  into  the  little 
house. 

Lord  Henry  proved  to  be  more  than  a  mere 
benefactor.  He  came  forward  and  made  himself 
an  absolute  friend  to  his  man,  and  did  it  with  all 
the  tact  and  charm  of  which  he  was  singularly 
capable.  His  admiration  for  Mark  was  very 
generous  and  very  sincere;  he  saw  in  the  stern, 
struggling  enthusiast  a  latent  talent  for  organisa- 
tion and  rule  which  won  his  highest  feelings  of 
respect  and  wonder.  Mark  had  all  that  he  had 
not,  even  as  he  had  what  Mark  had  not  and  most 
wanted.  They  were  complements,  and  as  such 
felt  a  mutual  attraction.  Lord  Henry  was  above 
all  things  a  theorist,  sometimes  an  idealist,  but 
essentially  critical  and  inactive  in  his  methods  of 
meeting  life.  Mark  was  a  man  of  action,  even 
violent  action,  decisive,  ready,  nothing  if  not 
putting  his  beliefs  and  emotions  into  actual  work- 


Saints  in  Society  101 

ing  trim;  to  him  a  dream  meant  a  call  to  im- 
mediate action.  Lord  Henry  had  money  and  no 
initiative;  Mark  had  initiative  to  the  degree  of 
talent,  and  no  money.  Now  that  they  had  met  and 
combined  forces,  they  each  realised  suddenly  what 
a  power  they  were,  welded  hand  in  hand.  They 
responded  readily  one  to  the  other,  and  struck 
up  a  warm  and  genuine  friendship  from  the  very 
outset. 

Mark's  roughness,  his  untidy,  ill-fitting  gar- 
ments, were  to  the  half -mystic  eye  of  Vade  but 
the  shell  of  a  brilliant  chrysalis,  and  rather  proved 
him  to  be  a  real  chrysalis  than  otherwise.  Still 
they  annoyed  him  and  offended  his  inherent  good 
taste,  and  he  made  a  mental  resolve  to  give  the 
genius  a  hint  about  a  tailor  when  he  saw  his 
opportunity. 

You  can  be  very  original  and  yet  take  care  of 
your  hands  and  get  shaved  often  enough,  so  Vade 
argued,  and  he  lay  in  wait  for  the  time  when  he 
could  quite  inoffensively  communicate  this  axiom 
to  Mark. 

The  occasion  was  not  long  in  coming.  One  of 
Mark's  future  constituents  -  to  -  be,  a  very  rabid 
little  editor  of  a  local  paper,  devoted  to  scurrility 
and  general  attacks  on  the  universe,  had  lately 


102  Saints  in  Society 

plunged  violently  for  the  subject  of  Hading's 
candidature,  alleging  with  withering  scorn  that 
the  printer  of  Minden  Street  would  be  a  "gentle- 
man" yet. 

"  Heavens!  I  hope  not,"  said  Mark. 

"  Oh!  I  don't  know,"  said  Lord  Henry,  who  was 
smoking  a  cigarette  in  Mark's  little  office  and 
discussing  some  future  plans  with  him;  "that 
is  n't  such  a  bad  thing  to  be.  If  you  must  make 
a  fool  of  yourself  on  this  earth,  that  is  certainly 
the  nicest  way  to  do  it.'" 

"  But  I  do  not  intend  to  make  a  fool  of  myself," 
said  Mark;  "besides,  I  hate  the  word.  Gentle- 
man! It  does  n't  mean  anything;  it 's  a  played- 
out,  used-up,  empty  word." 

"  It  means  a  few  things,"  said  Lord  Henry. 

"What  is  a  gentleman?"  said  Mark,  growing 
enthusiastically  belligerent,  as  he  always  did  on 
such  topics.  "  I  ask  you — what  makes  one?" 

"Well,"  said  Lord  Henry,  pulling  his  long  chin 
and  blinking  his  white  eyelashes,  "in  the  main, 
I  suppose,  it 's  a  man  who  has  a  bath  every  day 
and  pretends  he  thinks  women  more  important 
than  himself." 

Mark  stared  at  him  contemptuously. 

"Pretends?"  he  said.     "Bah!  you  have  con- 


Saints  in  Society  103 

demned  your  gentleman  in  one  word.  An  honest 
man — that  is  my  idea — an  honest  man." 

"  Not  if  he  does  n't  look  after  his  nails,"  drawled 
the  benefactor,  wisely.  "  Oh!  no.  Honesty  with- 
out soap  is  one  of  the  most  painful  things  to  en- 
counter that  I  know.  You  can  be  quite  noble 
and  yet  shave.  Carlyle  did  a  lot  of  harm  with 
Sartor  Resartus.  He  made  microby  geniuses 
quite  fashionable.  To  be  really  great  you  should 
soar  so  much  above  baths  that  you  don't  mind 
having  'em.  It  is  n't  really  great,  it 's  rather 
small,  to  be  dependent  on  your  rudeness  and 
the  badness  of  your  tailor  for  your  originality. 
My  dear  fellow,  I  assure  you  I  speak  truly." 

"Ugh,"  said  Mark,  "it 's  the  fop  that  I  hate. 
Think  of  it — a  man — a  man"  (he  banged  the 
little  oilcloth-covered  table  till  it  jumped  again), 
"with  an  immortal  soul,  living  for  finery,  or 
smart  coats,  and  scarf-pins,  forsooth.  I  ask  you, 
is  it  a  noble  ambition,  a  worthy  one,  a  thing  to 
live  and  die  for?" 

"No,  it  is  n't,"  said  Vade,  serenely,  "but  your 
logic  is  rocky.  I  don't  live  and  die  for  my  break- 
fast, but  I  have  to  have  it  all  the  same.  There 
are  lots  of  things  that  are  n't  'noble  ambitions,' 
bother  it,  but  ever  so  necessary  for  all  that. 


104  Saints  in  Society 

Besides,  you  invented  that  fop.  There  is  n't  such 
a  person.  You  reformers  have  always  got  such 
a  lot  of  stock  bogies.  I  resent  that  fop.  I  say 
he  's  a  negation,  except  in  a  hairdresser's  shop  in 
the  suburbs  of  Paris,  and  even  then  he  is  n't 
twenty,  so  he  does  n't  count  as  a  man,  'noble' 
or  otherwise.  You  should  n't  invent  sinners 
to  preach  to.  There  are  plenty  of  real  ones, 
Heaven  knows.  But  you  all  do  it,  all  you  good 
folks." 

Mark  stared  at  him  in  unaffected  astonishment. 
He  was  unused  to  opponents  who  did  not  lose 
their  temper,  and  it  non-plussed  him  for  a  moment 
to  find  one. 

"I  invent  fops?"  he  said.  "I  know  nothing 
of  such  men,  nothing  of  that  world,  thank  my 
stars.  All  I  care  about  are  these  poor  chaps 
about  me  here,  and  all  I  think  about  is  what 
might  be  done  for  them — aye,  and  can  be  now, 
thank  God!  I  've  got  but  one  ambition — to  work 
out  some  future  for  these  poor  fellows ;  to  better 
their  conditions  and  lift  them  from  their  ignorant 
miseries."  His  voice  shook  with  feeling  as  he 
said  it,  and  he  looked  so  earnest,  and  eager,  and 
handsome,  with  the  glow  of  it  all  in  his  dark  face, 
that  Vade  glanced  at  him  with  eyes  of  genuine 


Saints  in  Society  105 

homage — the  homage  one  man  will  pay  to 
another's  talent  or  goodness  so  generously  and 
so  well. 

"Hear,  hear!"  he  said  quizzically,  "well  said. 
And  I  'm  ready  to  follow  you.  Only  do  let  us 
teach  these  dear  good  chaps  to  get  washed  more 
often.  And  I  would  suggest  that  we  institute  a 
better  tailor's  shop  in  these  parts." 

Hading,  though  ignorant  of  many  things,  was 
not  stupid,  and  he  thought  over  this  conversation 
several  times  when  going  to  and  fro  on  the  endless 
business  matters  that  filled  his  days.  His  respect 
for  Vade  was  deep  and  true,  and  it  began  to  dawn 
upon  him  that  there  was  some  sense  in  his  re- 
marks about  personal  niceties.  Once  or  twice 
in  the  little  office  when  turning  over  books  and 
papers  he  had  been  struck  with  the  whiteness  of 
Vade's  hand  and  the  contrast  of  it  against  his  own 
rough  and  shady  paw.  It  had  not  affected  him, 
save  as  another  proof  of  the  working-man's 
superiority.  "  White-handed  gentlemen"  had  for 
years  been  one  of  his  crack  terms  in  speaking 
to  dusky  audiences,  and  it  had  never  failed  to 
rouse  contemptuous  applause.  But,  now  that 
Vade  had  spoken  so  clearly  his  own  views  on  the 
subject,  Mark's  mind  began  to  be  open  to  the 


io6  Saints  in  Society 

possibility  that  there  was  something  to  be  said  for 
that  side,  too. 

"Did  you  mean  me?"  he  said  to  Vade  with  his 
characteristic  bluntness  a  few  days  later,  "when 
you  talked  about  soaping  and  shaving  and 
tailors?  Because  I  'm  a  rough  man,  and  never 
professed  to  be  anything  else.  But  if  there  is 
anything  I  can  do — "  he  paused  uncertainly. 
He  looked  like  a  great  rough  dog  talking  to  a 
canary,  in  his  coarse  shabby  clothes  as  contrasted 
with  the  immaculate  and  waxen  Vade. 

It  was  really  pathetic.     The  other  thought  so. 

"Look  here,"  he  said,  "you  come  and  lunch  at 
my  club.  I  '11  show  you  some  awfully  noble 
fellows  who  wear  nice  coats.  You  can  do  just  as 
you  like,  and  you  're  right  to  be  rough  and  all 
that  if  it  is  more  comfortable.  Only  your  talent 
is  going  to  get  you  on  "  (he  did  not  add  "  and  my 
money"),  "and  you  might  just  as  well  hold  your 
own  in  those  little  things.  You  will  have  plenty 
of  use  for  your  fighting  powers  and  your  pugna- 
city, my  dear  fellow,  without  searching  for  it  in 
your  attire." 

They  went  to  one  of  Vade 's. clubs  to  lunch. 
He  purposely  chose  a  quiet  hour,  but  of  course 
there  were  one  or  two  men  about,  and  they  stared 


Saints  in  Society  107 

a  little  from  their  tables  at  the  rough  companion 
he  brought  with  him.  Lord  Henry  was  an  oddity 
and  cultivated  oddities,  but  this  was  a  rather 
more  striking  one  than  usual.  The  Turkey  carpet 
got  a  little  on  Mark's  nerves — it  made  his  boots 
look  so  big,  and  not  nearly  black  enough.  He 
had  never  thought  they  were  brownish  before. 
There  was  quite  a  horrible  amount  of  mirrors,  and 
these  reflected  him  on  every  side,  in  a  way  that 
somehow  made  his  collar  look  grimy  and  too  low 
in  the  neck.  He  had  several  shocks  during  the 
course  of  that  lunch.  He  never  knew  before  that 
if  you  did  not  shave  for  two  days  that  it  marked 
you  off  from  other  men  as  a  sort  of  outcast.  He 
never  knew  before  that  wearing  no  white  cuffs 
below  the  edge  of  your  coat  sleeve  made  you  want 
to  hide  your  hands  under  the  table.  It  had 
never  even  occurred  to  him  that  there  was  some- 
thing mysteriously  but  infinitely  belittling  in  hav- 
ing a  brown  coat  and  grey  trousers  and  blue 
waistcoat  and  a  quantity  of  neck  showing  out  of 
your  collar.  He  rather  irritably  wished  there 
were  n't  so  many  dishes  and  so  many  forks ;  and 
when  the  waiter  held  the  vegetable  dish  he  took 
it  from  him  into  his  own  hands  and  put  it  on  the 
table  with  an  angry  bang. 


io8  Saints  in  Society 

He  felt  very  cross.  It  was  no  use  saying  to 
himself  that  all  this  galled  him  because  he  was 
"great,"  that  he  was  above  it,  and  it  was  trifling 
against  a  noble  ambition,  though  that  was  what 
he  tried  to  say  in  instinctive  self-defence. 

"You  see  that  man  over  there?"  said  Vade, 
cautiously  indicating  a  thin,  grey-haired  man  at 
a  distant  table.  He  had  a  perfectly-fitting  suit 
and  wore  a  gardenia  in  his  coat.  He  was  deep  in 
his  paper. 

"That  dandy  with  the  flower,  you  mean?" 
said  Hading,  irritably. 

"Yes,"  said  Vade,  quietly,  "that  dandy.  He 
held  Burgher's  Kop  in  the  late  war  for  six  weeks 
with  only  twenty  men  and  ten  days'  rations  and 
fouled  water.  He  nursed  the  enterics  himself 
when  he  was  n't  commanding,  nursed  'em  and 
washed  'em,  by  Jove,  and  wrote  their  letters  for 
'em,  and  starved  himself  for  'em.  He  had  no 
food  himself  for  the  last  three  days  of  the  siege. 
He  held  out  and  he  won  the  day,  but  it 's  injured 
his  health  for  good.  But  you  can  never  screw  a 
word  of  it  from  him.  That  dandy,"  he  added, 
softly. 

Mark  felt  abashed.  He  looked  several  times 
at  the  thin-faced  man  in  question.  It  was  a  new 


Saints  in  Society  109 

experience.  There  was  no  label  on  the  hero. 
He  was  absolutely  unconscious  of  attracting  any 
attention  whatever.  He  went  on  calmly  with 
his  lunch.  Mark,  who  had  always  thought  lions 
necessarily  brandished  their  manes,  sank  a  little 
into  various  reflections. 

Other  people  were  pointed  out  to  him,  other 
things  discussed.  They  had  a  day  of  it.  Vade 
took  him  to  the  Strangers'  Gallery  at  the  House 
where  he  heard,  as  luck  would  have  it,  an  exciting 
debate.  Mark  listened  and  took  it  all  in  with 
intense  avidity.  Of  course  he  had  been  before, 
but  he  had  never  been  in  the  capacity  of  one  who 
shortly  hoped  to  join  those  distinguished  ranks, 
and  there  is  a  world  of  difference  between  the 
two  attitudes.  Now  he  looked  at  the  rows  upon 
rows  of  men  lounging,  lolling,  sprawling  on  the 
red  velvet  seats  with  the  tense  interest  of  a  rival. 
The  very  tilt  of  some  of  the  most  awry  of  awry  top 
hats  had  a  significance  for  him  now.  He  leaned  for- 
ward with  his  hands  clasped  tightly  together  and 
his  dark  brows  knitted,  watching,  watching  with 
all  the  concentration  of  which  he  was  capable. 
He  looked  very  fine.  Again  Vade's  eyes  lighted 
upon  him  with  a  sort  of  wistful  admiration; 
rough  power  appealed  to  him  tremendously,  and 


no  Saints  in  Society 

certainly  here  was  real  power  if  ever  he  read  the 
signs. 

Later  on  he  proposed  a  play,  but  Mark  had  had 
enough  of  feeling  himself  a  wild  man  of  the  woods 
turned  loose  in  a  drawing-room  for  one  day,  and 
insisted  on  going  home,  excusing  himself,  a  little 
shamefacedly,  as  not  being  "presentable."  This 
was  the  admission  Vade  had  worked  for,  and  he 
chuckled  inwardly.  He  had  won  his  point. 

So  that  from  that  day  a  new  sense  of  personal 
self-respect  came  into  Mark's  consciousness,  and 
he  proceeded  to  put  himself  into  the  hands  of  a 
fairly  decent  tailor  from  that  time  forth.  He 
clothed  himself  still  in  one  sense  as  a  "working- 
man,"  but  it  was  the  costume  of  the  traditional 
stage  working-man,  the  Labour  leader  who  gets 
interviewed,  not  quite  the  one  he  had  originally 
dreamed  himself  to  be.  Still,  clothes  are  only 
trifles,  surface  things  he  said,  and  there  is  really 
no  difference  between  a  neatly-cut  dark-blue  suit 
fitting  a  man  well  and  a  heterogeneous  costume 
such  as  he  had  worn  at  Vade's  lunch  to  his  own 
supreme  and  unutterable  confusion. 

He  got  a  little  "chaffed"  by  his  supporters,  the 
men  of  his  own  class  and  world,  for  developing 
into  a  "swell,"  and  the  local  papers  entered  into 


Saints  in  Society  in 

some  really  embarrassing  personalities  over  this 
little  reform  of  his.  But  he  did  not  care  a  rap 
for  local  papers,  and,  popular  as  he  was  with  his 
compeers,  he  had  something  in  his  manner  that 
prevented  the  joke  from  being  extended  very  far. 
They  always  had  the  underlying  consciousness 
that  he  could  snub  them  if  he  tried,  very  severely, 
and  this  conviction  had  of  old  proved  a  wonderful 
safeguard  to  him  upon  occasions,  when  his  habit 
of  religious  quotation  might  have  otherwise  got 
him  into  serious  comment  and  open  scoffing.  As 
the  sage  George  Herbert  has  said,  "Love  thy 
neighbour  but  pull  not  down  thy  fence."  Mark 
had  always  kept  his  fences  in  good  repair. 

The  dignity  that  was  natural  to  him,  that  was 
a  part  of  his  innermost  character,  went  well  with 
these  improved  sartorial  conditions.  His  wife  was 
secretly  struck  by  the  rapid  growth  of  her  lord 
into  a  "real  gentleman,"  or  what  impressed  her 
as  such,  and  began  to  show  him  an  outward  re- 
spect that  had  hitherto  been  somewhat  wanting. 
She  had  secretly,  since  the  brief  bloom  of  court- 
ship and  early  married  life,  very  brief  indeed  in 
such  households,  held  an  opinion  that  Mark  was 
"  a  crank,"  made  so  entirely  by  that  blighting  pro- 
cess she  called  being  "good."  She  had  always 


ii2  Saints  in  Society 

cherished  a  dim  sort  of  idea  that  if  only  he  had 
not  been  so  "good"  he  might  have  been  more 
dressy,  after  her  own  ideal  of  that  estate,  and 
have  cut  an  appearance  at  least  worthy  of  a  'bus 
conductor  on  a  Sunday  afternoon — namely,  a 
cotton  tie  and  a  buttonhole,  and  a  bowler  hat  on 
one  side.  Her  own  life,  in  its  blind  way,  had 
been  one  long  strife  against  dreary  conditions  and 
material  ugliness,  whether  caused  by  poverty  or 
"goodness,"  or  an  amalgamation  of  both.  And 
she  had  signified  her  dissatisfaction  with  these 
drab  surroundings  by  donning  artificial  jewellery 
and  cotton  roses  and  cheap  finery,  with  what 
relief  to  the  angry,  troubled  spirit  no  moralist  can 
hope  to  imagine  or  reach.  For  moralists  always 
see  the  motives  of  others  in  an  eclipse,  the  blackest 
shadow  where  there  may  perhaps  be  light  behind. 
Any  moralist  you  like  to  name  would  have  seen 
in  Clo's  old  love  of  finery  a  desire  to  catch  admira- 
tion unworthily.  And  yet  it  had  been  her  best 
protest  against  hideous  conditions — the  incipient 
instinct  for  reform  and  recreation.  And  a  "sor- 
row's crown  of  sorrows  "  to  the  majority  of  natures 
struggling  in  such  darkness  is  its  own  stupidity 
and  blindness;  it  cannot  tell  you  what  it  wants 
— it  cannot  even  tell  God.  It  only  feels  stifled 


Saints  in  Society  113 

and  miserable  in  a  stuffy,  hideous  place,  and 
strives  to  get  relief  by  grasping  wildly  at  what 
beauty  lies  within  its  range  of  vision:  the  half- 
penny bunch  of  half -dead  violets  smelling  of  yellow 
soap  and  bought  at  a  street  corner ;  the  gay  "  yat " 
with  its  tawdry  endeavour  after  fashion;  the 
showy  blouse,  at  a  sweating  price ;  the  mother-o'- 
pearl  brooch  set  in  mean  gilt;  the  tin  earrings. 
It  is  very,  very  pathetic — God's  eternal,  nameless 
beauty  to  be  represented  by  such  things  to  any 
little,  struggling  soul!  Yet  to  those  reared  in 
dun-coloured  fogs  and  slums,  with  the  screams  of 
filthy  children  ringing  in  their  ears,  with  the  smell 
of  fried  fish  in  their  nostrils,  with  nothing  but 
poverty,  hunger,  ill-health,  depression,  and  down- 
fall all  around  them  like  a  great  grey  wall,  even 
a  hideous  scarf  or  a  blue  glass  vase  with  magenta 
enamel  roses  on  it  is  an  oasis  of  beauty  in  a 
desert,  a  treasure  dropped  from  some  vague  dis- 
tant city  where  there  is  untold  beauty  that  has 
not  entered  into  the  heart  of  man ;  and  comes,  in 
some  wise,  as  a  messenger. 

Now  Mark  had  made  exactly  the  same  protest, 
but  on  entirely  opposite  lines.  From  the  deadly 
hideous  materialism  of  his  slum-bred  life  he  had 
sought  relief  in  the  abstraction  of  noble  effort. 


ii4  Saints  in  Society 

He  had  fought  hotly  with  the  deadening  condi- 
tions of  poverty  and  utter  squalor,  not  by  adorn- 
ing his  body  as  the  woman  did,  but  by  adorning 
his  mind  and  ennobling  his  experience.  He  had 
done  this  now  so  long  that  he  had  reached  a  stage 
of  spiritual  and  mental  development  where  his 
fellow-men  instinctively  called  him  "master," 
some  of  those  fellow-men  his  superiors,  as  in  the 
case  of  Vade.  Out  of  the  slough  of  a  hopeless 
material  environment  he  had  dragged  himself, 
ennobled,  strengthened,  and  beautified  to  such 
an  extent  that  hundreds  were  ready  now  to  hold 
him  up  as  their  leader  and  model  and  hero. 
There  is  no  power  so  magnetic  as  the  fact  of  a 
man  having  given  himself  for  his  friends.  Even 
the  slums  felt  dimly  that  infinite  triumph  of  the 
"greater  love."  And  after  their  first  thrill  of 
astonishment,  it  did  not  take  long  for  Mark's  busy 
advocates  to  fairly  sweep  in  votes  for  this  their 
own  man,  the  "man  of  the  People,"  the  fellow- 
workman  who  had  become  so  beloved  and  feared 
by  all.  Those  were  tremendous  weeks,  but 
they  passed  and  drew  finally  to  the  great 
election  day  and  the  ultimate  triumph,  yelled 
from  a  thousand  rough  throats,  that  Mark  Had- 
ing was  returned  as  Labour  member.  He  never 


Saints  in  Society  1 1 5 

forgot  that  hour  and  its  long  series  of  noisy 
triumphs.  It  was  a  hot,  blazing  spring  day  when 
his  glory  was  achieved,  one  of  those  days  when 
the  sun  is  scorching  and  pitiless,  though  pale  in 
colour,  and  the  wind  bitter  and  cruel  when  you 
caught  it  suddenly  at  drab  street  corners  whirling 
little  rings  of  dry  dust,  and  sending  pieces  of 
waste-paper  cutting  against  your  face  suddenly. 
The  sort  of  weather  when  the  unreasoning  lady 
of  the  lower  classes  puts  on  a  cotton  top  to  her 
destruction,  and  the  goddess  of  the  upper  world 
her  thickest  furs.  When  the  silliest  spring 
flowers  in  the  parks  creep  out  a  little  only  to  be 
withered,  but  the  wise  acacia  closes  up  her  hard 
little  boughs  against  such  fraudulent  summer  sun- 
shine all  the  tighter  and  more  firmly  than  in  the 
wet,  but  sincere  winter.  That  day  he  was  at  it 
for  hours  in  the  close,  crowded  assembly  rooms — 
hours  of  work  and  excitement  and  hot  victory. 

He  came  home  in  the  evening,  tired  out  but 
elated,  for  a  wash  and  a  few  moments'  breathing 
space  before  some  festivities  to  be  given  in  his 
honour  by  his  triumphant  constituents.  It  was 
still  light  though  after  six  o'clock,  and  the  sun 
was  sinking  in  a  mass  of  dull,  pea-soup-coloured 
murkiness  above  the  dreary  house-tops,  looking 


n6  Saints  in  Society 

like  a  poached  egg.  Bits  of  paper  whirled  about 
the  little  gutters,  with  orange  peel,  and  near 
Mark's  door  a  castaway  shoe.  He  glanced  at  it 
with  his  shining  eyes,  this  flushed,  happy,  elated 
hero,  and  thought  half  jokingly : 

"A  cast-off  shoe?  Is  that  a  good  omen? 
Why,  rather!  They  throw  them  at  weddings. 
Foolish  folks  say  they  mean  luck,  and  this  day 
is  more  to  me  than  a  wedding  day!" 

His  little  palings  were  covered  with  boards 
holding  election  posters,  big  blue  letters  on  a 
yellow  ground,  and  similar  announcements  filled 
all  the  narrow  windows.  Bits  of  these  bills  had 
been  torn  off  by  the  wind  or  the  neighbouring 
small  rascals,  and  made  the  entrance  and  steps 
a  chaos  of  untidy  discomfort,  in  which  the  rude 
south-east  wind  was  playing  further  havoc  by 
adding  orange  peel  and  leaves  to  the  quota. 
Mark  stooped  down  mechanically  and  started 
clearing  away  some  of  the  debris  from  his  portal. 
He  liked  order,  and  especially  now  on  such  a  day. 
He  gathered  together  the  outstanding  boards  and 
carried  them  indoors  on  his  strong,  burly  shoulder, 
calling  merrily  for  his  wife  as  he  did  so.  When 
Clo  appeared,  her  eyes  shining  with  excitement 
at  the  great  news  of  his  success,  which  had  come 


Saints  in  Society  117 

to  her  by  noon,  he  told  her  to  help  him  remove  all 
the  bills  pinned  on  to  their  little  windows  by 
letter  wafers.  This  she  did  willingly  in  great 
enthusiasm,  asking  him  questions  as  she  tore  off 
the  now  useless  posters  and  thrust  them  into  the 
waste-paper  basket  on  his  office  floor.  She  wore 
her  new  grey  stuff  dress,  bought  out  of  the  leavings 
of  her  charity  to  Jemima,  in  honour  of  the  great 
occasion,  and  her  hair  was  very  prettily  dressed — 
as  near  as  she  could  recollect  in  imitation  of  Lady 
Veronica's,  gathered  back  into  her  neck  and  minus 
the  "  halo."  At  her  breast  she  wore  a  little  bunch 
of  foreign  violets.  She  had  never  looked  so  fresh 
and  neat  and  worthy  of  her  hard-working  husband 
as  at  this  moment.  The  spring  and  hope  in  her 
blood,  and  a  faint  pink  colour  suffused  her  cheeks, 
which  flushed  still  more  as  Mark  repeated  the 
story  of  his  triumph  again  and  again  in  answer 
to  her  questions. 

"Now  I  must  go,  little  woman,"  he  said. 
"There  's  a  big  dinner — a  banquet  of  some  sort 
for  me  to-night  at  the  Blue  Boar — and  I  've  got 
to  get  ready  for  it." 

He  had  cleared  away  with  her  help  all  the  win- 
dow posters.  He  was  just  cramming  the  last  one 
into  the  already  gorged  waste-paper  basket  when 


u8  Saints  in  Society 

his  eye  caught  a  remaining  hand-bill  on  the  wall. 
He  went  up  to  it  and  tore  it  away  from  the  pin 
that  held  it.  Hanging  next  to  it  was  a  small 
common  card  bearing  upon  it  a  text  in  silver 
lettering  surrounded  by  forget-me-nots.  It  said, 
"The  Lord  prosper  thee." 

"That  thing,  too,"  he  said,  pulling  the  tawdry 
thing  off  its  tin  tacks,  "it  is  n't  wanted  here." 

His  wife  gave  a  little  cry  of  dismay. 

"Don't,  Mark;  that 's  Mrs.  Deane's  present  to 
you.  She  would  n't  take  it  away  when  she  left 
this  room.  She  said,  '  I  '11  leave  that  if  I  may  for 
your  husband.  I  mean  the  blessing  from  my 
heart' — that 's  what  she  said.  She  did  really." 

But  Mark  dropped  the  little  card  into  the  heap 
of  used-up  election  posters. 

"Nonsense,"  he  said,  but  good-humouredly 
enough.  "  I  can't  have  Mrs.  Deane's  texts  in 
this  office.  This  is  a  public  office.  It  does  n't 
do.  Only  the  other  day  Baxter — you  know  what 
a  low-class,  scoffing  fellow  he  is — was  in  here 
arguing  about  something  or  other.  My  clothes, 
or  my  luck,  or  something.  As  he  was  going  out 
he  caught  sight  of  that  text  affair  of  yours  and 
made  a  nasty  remark.  I  don't  like  that  sort  of 
thing." 


Saints  in  Society  119 

"  What  did  he  say  ? "  said  the  girl,  slowly  picking 
the  discarded  blessing  off  the  heap  of  rubbishy 
posters  and  looking  at  its  tawdry  beauties  rather 
ruefully. 

"  He  said — well,  I  don't  like  to  repeat  it.  He 
said,  'The  Lord  prosper  thee? — Umph!  it  is  a 
lord  that  has  prospered  thee,  eh?  That 's  the 
way  to  get  on,  Hading,  that 's  the  dodge.'  Of 
course  there  's  nothing  in  it — I  suppose  he  thought 
he  was  funny  to  bring  in  a  joke  about  Lord  Henry 
— but  I  don't  like  to  give  such  fellows  a  chance." 

"Well,  but  you  needn't  throw  it  away,"  said 
his  wife. 

"  It  is  n't  wanted  here." 

Clo  glanced  at  it  again.  "  But — but  it 's  a 
text,"  she  said. 

"Yes,  I  know,"  he  answered. 

"But — is  n't  it  lucky?"  she  asked  tentatively. 

"Lucky?"  he  answered  contemptuously,  with 
fine  contempt  for  all  such  mystic  notions  of  life 
and  its  ulterior  helps.  "  Rubbish.  That  for  it 's 
luck!"  He  took  it  from  her  hesitating  hand  and 
tore  it  in  two,  dropping  the  two  pieces  into  the 
basket. 

With  a  disappointed  little  cry  she  stooped  and 
picked  up  the  two  silver  and  blue  pieces. 


120  Saints  in  Society 

"I  should  have  liked  it  myself,  Mark.  It  's 
pretty  and  it  's  about  God  helping  you  on." 

"  Well,  and  He  has  helped  me  on,"  he  said,  with 
a  tinge  of  impatience  coming  into  his  tone  at  the 
tiresome  literalness  of  femininity,  and  kicking  the 
paper-basket  out  of  his  way. 

"  Still,  you  might  keep  the  card  that  says  so," 
said  the  girl,  in  rather  a  puzzled  voice.  She  took 
the  two  bits  of  card  away  into  the  parlour  to  find 
some  gum  to  mend  them.  He  left  her  sticking  it 
with  stamp  paper  from  behind,  with  rather  a 
knitted  brow.  He  got  his  wash  and  his  overcoat 
and  went  out  to  his  first  triumphal  banquet,  feel- 
ing the  very  pavement  dance  beneath  the  stepping 
of  his  freed  and  happy  feet.  In  the  gutter  he 
passed  the  cast-off  shoe.  The  uses  of  most  things 
come  to  an  end. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

HPHE  torn  text,  fixed  together  a  little  unsteadily 
*  by  strips  of  stamp  paper,  was  now  given  a 
place  of  honour  in  the  parlour.  If  Mrs.  Deane, 
in  her  constant  visits  to  that  now  tidy  and  fairly 
cosy  sanctum,  noticed  its  removal  from  the  outer 
office  she  said  nothing  at  all.  She  was  that  most 
rare  of  angels — a  good  woman  who  knows  how 
to  hold  her  tongue.  Instead  of  attacking  Mark 
about  the  trifle  she  went  on  calmly  with  her  gentle 
ministrations  to  his  wife,  realising  in  her  own 
sweet,  quiet  fashion  that  after  all  symbolism 
means  so  much  to  women  and  so  little  to  men: 
or  so  consoling  herself  for  the  banishment  of  her 
little  offering. 

Clo  alluded  to  it  when  Dorcas  first  came  in 
after  its  removal,  bringing  with  her  a  fragrant 
bunch  of  wallflowers  as  a  congratulatory  offering. 
She  spoke  as  though  the  thing  were  rather  on  her 
mind. 

"  I  'm  sorry,  Dorcas.     You  see  your  text  got 


122  Saints  in  Society 

torn,  but  I  've  mended  it."  Her  face  went  rather 
red,  as  though  some  worrying  thought  troubled 
her.  But  her  mild-eyed  friend  took  no  notice, 
only  remarking  gently : 

"  Oh,  my  dear,  what  a  great  power  has  been  put 
into  Mark's  hands.  Let  us  both  ask  a  blessing  on 
his  work." 

"Yes,"  said  the  girl,  "if  you  like  I  will  to-night 
when  I  go  to  bed." 

When  Mark  came  in  a  little  later  Dorcas  said 
something  similar  to  him  in  her  modest  fashion, 
her  face  in  soft  flush  like  a  petal  of  apple  blossom 
that  has  caught  the  sunrise. 

"Oh,  that 's  all  right,  Mrs.  Deane,"  said  Mark, 
cheerfully,  in  answer  to  her  congratulations, 
shaking  her  hand  and  sitting  down  to  his  supper ; 
"  I  've  done  it  now,  have  n't  I?  I  told  you  what 
I  could  do  if  only  I  got  the  chance.  I  shall  go 
ahead  now,  for  there  's  lots  to  be  done." 

"Yes,  yes,"  she  said,  looking  at  him  affection- 
ately, "it  is  a  great  work.  How  wonderful  are 
the  ways  of  Him  who  frees  the  captive  longing 
and  teaches  the  bound  spirit  to  go  forward  and 
accomplish  His  behests  in  strength  and  power." 

"Yes,"  he  answered,  helping  himself  to  the 
salt,  and  rather  clumsily  overturning  the  little 


Saints  in  Society  123 

salt-cellar  on  to  the  table-cloth  as  he  spoke. 
"And  money  and  influence  are  wonderful  things, 
too,  by  George !  I  Ve  seen  just  lately  what  they 
can  do.  I  Ve  got  Lord  Henry  Vade  to  thank  for 
my  victory." 

"Of  course,"  she  replied  softly,  "under  God. 
He  must  be  a  very  good  man,  Mark." 

"Oh,"  he  answered,  "a  gentleman,  you  know. 
The  real  old  sort.  As  fine  a  fellow  as  I  have  ever 
seen." 

"Mark  says,"  put  in  Clo,  who  was  waiting  on 
her  husband,  dressed  quite  tidily  and  prettily, 
"that  he  has  clean  shirts  twice  a  day.  Fancy 
that  for  a  gentleman!  He  said  so,  did  n't  he, 
Mark?" 

"Oh,  that,  and  much  more,"  said  Mark,  who 
was  deep  in  a  rather  primitive  salad,  and  eating 
somewhat  fast  because  he  had  a  meeting  to  attend 
and  was  limited  as  to  time.  "You  should  see 
his  club.  The  way  those  fellows  live — it  's  sur- 
prising! Such  luxuries,  and  such  elegance.  I  tell 
you  I  was  astonished." 

"  Still,  he  uses  his  wealth  to  help  the  unhappy, 
does  n't  he?"  said  the  gentle  Dorcas,  half  to  her- 
self, as  though  working  out  some  problem  as  to 
the  innermost  ethical  value  of  living  well  at  clubs 


124  Saints  in  Society 

and  picking  out  the  hopeful  points  from  amongst 
the  debris  as  farmers  hunt  for  eggs  in  a  hay-loft, 
or  miners  find  gold  in  ore. 

"  Oh,  I  was  n't  running  him  down,"  said  Mark, 
busy  with  his  meal;  "I  was  telling  Clo  how 
superior  he  is  even  to  what  she  thought.  Those 
chaps  do  things  that  you  and  Clo  can't  even 
imagine,  of  course.  I  Ve  been  about  with  him  a 
bit  already  and  seen  something  of  life — that  life. 
I  tell  you  it  's  grand." 

"The  grandest  life  of  all,"  said  Dorcas,  slowly, 
while  Clo  stood  listening  with  rapt  interest  to  the 
two,  "is  the  life  spent  like  the  Master's — going 
about  doing  good." 

Clo  nodded. 

"Oh,  of  course,"  said  Mark,  restive  over  his 
cheese  and  salad  and  glancing  at  his  watch;  "but 
as  Lord  Henry  says,  you  can  do  good  without 
going  about  talking  about  it  at  every  turn.  You 
see,  Dorcas,  I  Ve  got  to  deal  with  men — men  of 
business  and  men  of  the  world — and  so  I  know 
what  I  'm  talking  about.  You  only  get  about 
amongst  women  and  children  and  that  sort  of 
thing,  and  your  way  is  just  the  thing  for  them. 
I  don't  say  it  isn't.  I  do  it  myself  if  I  'm  ad- 
dressing women  and  children." 


Saints  in  Society  125 

"Do  it?"  said  Dorcas,  gravely,  "do  what?" 
Her  eyes  were  very  searching.  She  had  risen  to 
go,  and  now  laid  her  sweet  offering  of  dim  brown 
velvet  wallflowers  on  the  little  table. 

"Why,  talk  that  way,  and  all  that,"  he  said, 
looking  at  her  and  then  just  slightly  dropping  his 
eyes  a  little  quickly  as  he  met  hers;  "you  know 
what  I  mean." 

"You  cannot  'do'  the  love  of  the  heart  and 
not  'do'  it  at  will,  Mark,"  she  answered;  "it 
flows  out  of  its  own  abundance  like  the  sweetness 
of  these  flowers.  Yours  is  a  great  talent;  you 
are  wonderfully  blest ;  but  that  power  is  given  to 
you  to  use  for  the  Giver.  I  cannot  see  any  other 
use  for  the  power." 

"  Well,"  he  said,  rather  testily,  "  am  I  not  using 
it  so?  Aren't  I  doing  all  this  for  the  poor  chaps 
we  've  always  been  so  sorry  for  and  so  anxious 
to  help?  You  religious  women  are  never  satis- 
fied. You  're  always  sticking  at  trifles.  Because 
to  help  them  permanently  at  all  I  must  put  on  a 
black  coat  and  go  amongst  gentlemanly  fellows 
in  their  clubs,  and  so  on,  you  jib  at  once  and  hint 
that  I  'm  some  sort  of  a  traitor.  It 's  a  bit  too 
much." 

"No,  no,"  she  said  softly,  "I  did  not  say  so. 


i26  Saints  in  Society 

Forgive  me,  forgive  me.  I  was  overwhelmed, 
Mark,  at  the  greatness  of  your  power.  I  saw 
what  you  could  do,  I  think,  as  I  never  saw  it 
before.  You  will  perhaps  be  a  very  great  man, 
Mark.  I  know  we  think  alike  about  the  work 
that  lies  waiting  to  be  done  by  all  who  have 
power — the  work  of  doing  good  as  one  goes  about. 
Why,  your  little  Chloris  thinks  so,  too,  and  is 
doing  good  to  poor  bairnies  every  day."  She 
smiled  at  Clo,  who  looked  pleased  but  self-con- 
scious. "  But  of  you,  Mark,  we  are  so  proud,  and 
hope  so  much.  You  are  so  clever.  We  think — 
we  know  you  will  do  the  most  good  of  all." 

Mark  was  mollified. 

"All  right,"  he  said,  "I've  got  the  power, 
never  fear.  It 's  a  grand  thing  to  have.  And 
thank  you  for  coming  in  and  chatting  to  Clo. 
She  'd  be  dull  without  you,  with  me  away  so 
much.  Sorry  I  must  go.  Good-bye!"  He  was 
hurrying  into  his  coat  as  he  spoke,  and  after 
kissing  Clo  and  shaking  Mrs.  Deane  by  the  hand, 
he  ran  off  down  the  stairs  in  a  great  turmoil, 
whistling  as  he  went. 

Clo  stood  by  the  table,  mechanically  picking 
up  pinches  of  the  spilt  salt  and  throwing  it  over 
her  left  shoulder  with  great  precision.  Dorcas 


Saints  in  Society  127 

smiled  at  her  affectionately,  but  her  eyes  looked 
wistful. 

"  It 's  unlucky,"  said  Clo,  sheepishly  smiling 
too.  "  Mark  spilt  it,  but  I  'm  throwing  it  over 
my  own  shoulder  to  do  away  with  the  ill-luck." 

"Nonsense,"  said  her  friend,  kissing  her  good- 
night. "Judas  spilt  the  salt  when  he  betrayed 
his  Lord.  Be  sure  there  is  no  ill-luck  but  our 
own  sins  and  faults.  Good-night,  my  pretty 
precious." 

Her  cool  face  pressed  Clo's  and  she  was  gone. 
The  fragrance  of  the  wallflowers  filled  the  little 
room  like  a  tangible  effect  of  her  kind  presence. 
The  girl  picked  up  the  little  bunch  of  old-world 
country  sweetness,  and  carefully  arranged  it  in  a 
common  glass  vase  that  had  been  bought  origin- 
ally from  a  grocer,  full  of  marmalade.  In  the  old 
days  she  would  have  flung  the  flowers  anyhow 
into  a  jug  or  cup  with  a  total  disregard  to  their 
effect.  Now,  following  out  some  dim  train  of 
aspiration  after  something  alluring  but  unde- 
fined, called  ladyhood,  she  carefully  cut  the  tow 
binding  the  blossoms  and  put  them  in  with  some 
taste  and  lightness  of  touch,  so  that  they  dis- 
tinctly added  to  the  grace  of  the  room. 

Then  she  proceeded  to  wash  up  her  supper 


ia8  Saints  in  Society 

dishes  and  put  the  room  in  order.     She  did  it 
slowly,  because  as  yet  it  was  new  to  her  to  have 
any  sort  of  housewifely  routine,  and  partly  be- 
cause all  her   movements  were  quite  naturally 
slow,  except  when  she  was  cross,  when  they  be- 
came jerky.     The  table   cleared  and  the  cloth 
cover  rearranged  on  its  small  surface,  she  lighted 
a  little  lamp  already  trimmed  and  cleaned,  and 
sat  down  to  finish  a  piece  of  sewing  that  must  be 
done  before  the  morning.     It  was  a  small  gar- 
ment of  cheap  flannelette,  bought  from  one  of 
the  rolls  outside  the  flashy  draper's,  and  intended 
for  one  of  the  ragged  "baimies"  of  which  Dorcas 
had    spoken.     It    was    only    a    common    thing, 
cottony,  pink,  and  fluffy,  but  the  child  for  whom 
it  was  intended  was  dwelling  on  the  thought  of 
possessing  it  by  twelve  o'clock  to-morrow  with 
an  eagerness  and  pride  that  made  it  into  a  sort 
of    fortune.     Clo    stitched    away    quickly — she 
could  sew  well,  having  learned  to  do  that  perforce 
to  provide  herself  with  constant  finery;  and  she 
knew  the  morning  would  be  too  much  occupied 
to  allow  her  to  do  a  stitch  after  to-night.     She 
thought  of  this  fact  with  pride,  real  pride.     It 
straightened  her-  shoulders  visibly.     For  in  those 
circles,  to  do  one's  household  shopping  in  the 


Saints  in  Society  129 

morning  is  a  sign  of  immense  social  superiority. 
By  some  it  is  thought  to  be  a  token  of  wilful  ex- 
travagance, the  kind  that  in  copy-books  makes 
woeful  want.  Night  shopping,  after,  at  earliest, 
eight  o'clock,  is  quite  the  custom  in  those  parts, 
and  they  get  things  whole  pennies  cheaper  by 
having  them  later  and  off  stalls  than  by  haughtily 
buying  them  from  shops  in  the  morning.  In  this 
life  you  must  pay  for  everything  worth  having. 
If  you  will  be  a  bloated  aristocrat  and  buy  the 
meat  at  the  butcher's  before  it  has  gone  bad 
enough  to  be  twopence  a  pound  cheaper,  well 
then  you  must  pay  the  price  for  it.  Since  Mark's 
elevation  to  the  friendship  of  gentlemen  and  the 
candidature  of  his  borough,  the  need  of  a  change 
in  these  matters  had  struck  Clo,  together  with  her 
other  silent,  shy  little  reforms.  Saying  nothing 
to  Mark,  she  rearranged  her  domestic  affairs  on 
this  basis,  going  out  by  ten  o'clock  with  a  string 
bag,  out  of  which,  when  full,  oranges  rolled  and 
fish  poked  silly,  vacant  heads.  Thus  she  set  her- 
self to  live  up  to  her  husband's  dignity.  She 
suffered  a  little  upon  first  essaying  this  proud 
move,  and  slipped  along  to  the  high-road  shops 
with  some  celerity  and  blushes,  hoping  no  one 
would  observe  the  new  order  of  things  till  she 

9 


130  Saints  in  Society 

herself  got  used  to  them.  The  few  tradesmen 
who  knew  her  were  a  little  astonished  at  first, 
but  these  were  very  few,  as  she  only  usually  dealt 
at  stalls.  They  called  her  "lady,"  however,  for 
the  first  time  when  she  bought  decent  joints,  and 
occasionally  "  Miss,"  because  she  looked  so  young 
and  her  manner  had  a  newly-acquired  and  grace- 
ful shyness.  She  came  back  from  the  first  of 
these  trial  trips  with  the  head  of  a  codfish  looking 
belligerently  out  from  the  meshes  of  the  string 
bag,  as  though  defying  the  neighbours  to  chaff 
us  for  our  rise  in  the  world,  in  a  manner  giving 
him  quite  the  appearance  of  a  watch-dog  held  in 
leash.  Some  oranges  and  a  packet  of  match- 
boxes also  showed  out  of  the  corners.  Like  Mrs. 
Gilpin,  with  the  chaise  pulled  up  a  few  doors  away 
lest  the  folks  "should  say  that  she  was  proud," 
Clo  rather  dreaded  the  comments  of  Minden 
Street  on  this  daring  innovation.  But  possibly 
the  fierce-looking  cod  intimidated  them,  for  be- 
yond two  portly  and  unwashed  matrons  gossiping 
away  the  morning  hours  at  the  street  corner, 
making  loud  and  virtuous  remarks  on  some  of  us 
being  too  big  for  our  places,  and  kicking  down  the 
ladders  that  lifted  of  us  up  as  the  sayin'  is,  she 
got  home  with  her  protecting  fish  (like  a  fresco  of 


Saints  in  Society  131 

the  angel-guarded  Titus  carrying  his  piscatorial 
friend)  in  peace  and  safety. 

This  plan  naturally  made  the  home  affairs  run 
in  a  more  orderly  fashion.  The  dinner  so  bought 
was  cooked  and  out  of  the  way  by  the  afternoon, 
and  she  could  then  dress  herself  neatly  for  the 
day  as  her  husband  had  always  wished  her  to  do. 
Thus  she  had  much  more  time  to  take  pride  in 
her  little  house,  and  now  that  there  was  a  new 
parlour  carpet,  and  some  brand-new  oil-cloth  on 
the  small  stairs,  she  really  succeeded  in  making 
her  little  home  something  more  worthy  of  the 
name.  She  was  permitted  the  almost  unimagin- 
able dignity  of  a  charwoman ,  for,  as  Mark  said, 
"if  all  these  'swells'  are  coming  here,  we  must  be 
fit  to  receive  them";  and  so  a  brightness  and 
polished  appearance  of  the  little  gods  became  a 
daily  condition,  instead  of  the  drab,  dust-sodden 
appearance  they  had  once  possessed.  We  all 
say  that  it  is  wonderful  what  an  interest  in  life 
will  do  for  the  most  hopeless  people.  It  ought 
not  to  be  wonderful  considering  we  may  see  signs 
of  it  every  day,  but  I  suppose  it  will  always  strike 
us  afresh  as  miraculous  though  one  of  Nature's 
most  undeviating  laws — as  workable  as  sunshine 
in  the  production  of  a  little  struggling  plant  in  a 


132  Saints  in  Society 

dark  corner  of  ground,  or  the  fascinating  action 
of  light  drawing  half-dead  dusty  ivy  to  wake 
from  its  sloth  and  poke  eager  little  goldy-green 
shoots  through  the  brown  bricks  of  a  dry  old  wall. 

The  dull,  unwakened  heart  of  this  half -resentful 
Cockney  girl  woke  at  the  call  of  a  fresh  hope  and 
work  as  the  rock-bound  spring  hears  faintly  the 
far,  wild  call  of  the  sea  surging  and  singing  and 
tossing  into  its  cool  and  cave-bound  dreams,  and 
beats  its  little  silver  runnels  against  the  lichened 
stones,  and  comes  weltering  and  struggling 
through  the  encasing  earth  with  its  smell  of  fern 
roots  and  moss  and  infinite  coolnesses,  spluttering 
at  its  coming  freedom  and  weakness,  but  pushing 
on  definitely,  clearly,  hopefully,  till  lower  down 
It  starts  dashing  over  the  stones  in  a  baby  torrent, 
in  an  infant  stream,  and  finally,  beating  onward, 
flows  to  its  beloved,  the  sea. 

At  present  Clo's  nearest  approach  to  the  sea  of 
her  dreams  was  the  angry  cod's  head,  but  that 
was  a  small  point  gained.  Her  now  tidy  little 
home,  with  its  wallflowers  in  a  glass  vase,  her 
daily  work  for  the  children,  her  unbounded  ad- 
miration for  the  powers  of  her  husband,  were 
having  their  effect  upon  her  face.  The  sulky 
look  at  its  worst  was  slipping  away,  leaving  only 


Saints  in  Society  133 

a  gravity  and  shy  reserve  that  was  not  unattrac- 
tive. The  earlier  hours  and  more  orderly  life  and 
daintier  habits  were  having  their  effect  on  her 
health,  and  her  skin  certainly  looked  clearer  and 
better,  while  into  her  wide-apart  green  eyes  had 
come  an  interested,  inquiring  look,  which  was 
certainly  more  becoming  than  the  listless  semi- 
scowl  of  the  old  days.  Her  better-groomed  hair, 
in  its  attempt  to  simulate  the  graceful,  smooth 
waves  of  Veronica's  Kauffmann  coiffure,  now 
showed  to  advantage  for  the  first  time,  and  was 
distinctly  pretty  and  uncommon.  It  does  not 
take  long  for  a  London  girl  who  learns  to  respect 
herself  to  arrange  matters  to  give  the  effect  of 
prettiness.  They  have  a  marvellous  talent  in 
that  direction  when  they  really  give  their  minds 
to  it.  Those  who  have  worked  amongst  the  class 
in  question  can  testify  to  the  instinctive  talent 
for  suiting  themselves  that  such  seem  to  possess 
as  a  birthright ;  and  when  this  talent  is  allied  to 
a  sincere  desire  to  imitate  the  best  they  know  in 
a  class  above  them  the  rapidity  and  certainty  of 
their  judgment  is  really  marked.  London  is  full 
of  such  sartorial  geniuses,  a  fact  which  makes  the 
unthinking  say  that  the  London  lower  middle- 
class  girl  is  prettier  than  the  much- vaunted 


134  Saints  in  Society 

country  maid,  in  spite  of  the  latter 's  complexion. 
That  is  a  matter  open  to  doubt.  But  the  former 
has  intelligence  and  instinctive  artistic  judgment, 
and  the  latter,  as  a  rule,  has  not.  She  likes  her 
heavy  boots,  her  short  serge  skirts,  her  hideous 
hats,  her  lumpy,  unintelligent  hair-dressing  ap- 
proved of  by  the  parish;  she  does  not  see  that 
they  are  at  all  frightful  until  she  comes  to  London 
to  "do"  the  Academy,  and  then  she  sometimes 
dimly  realises  that  there  is  a  world  that  has  not 
got  mackintoshes  glued  to  its  arm,  and  hair  done 
at  the  back  of  the  head  like  a  penny  bun  that  has 
been  sat  upon. 

They  had  an  old  harmonium  in  the  Minden 
Street  house,  a  battered,  half-dumb  old  veteran 
in  a  light  wood  cover,  that  had  once  belonged  to 
Clo's  father — a  poor  old  printer  with  dim  dreams 
of  education.  The  girl  had  "learned  music"  at 
the  Board  School  after  Board  School  fashion,  that 
is  to  say  she  could  thump  Killarney  arranged 
in  fantasia  form  with  practically  the  same  chords 
in  the  bass  from  start  to  finish.  She  also  knew 
'Way  down  upon  the  Swanee  River  with  variations, 
the  latter  occurring  only  in  the  treble,  and  even 
then  being  sometimes  unintentional.  But  she 
had  long  cast  aside  this  rudimentary  art,  having 


Saints  in  Society  135 

no  piano,  and,  up  to  the  present,  no  wish  to  shine 
except  as  a  beauty  modelled  on  the  cigar-box 
ideal.  But  now  she  opened  the  creaking  instru- 
ment and  sat  herself  down  to  it,  putting  her  feet 
cautiously  on  the  stiff  old  blowers.  At  first  the 
thing  only  grunted,  then  when  she  pressed  hard 
with  her  fingers  it  wheezed,  then,  as  if  under  real 
protest,  began  to  squeak. 

She  was  a  little  upset  by  the  sounds  it  brought 
forth,  but  she  persisted  until  a  few  chords  were 
really  developed  bearing  some  faint  resemblance 
to  a  tune.  They  were  not  quite  equal  to  the  Lost 
Chord — in  fact,  their  only  resemblance  lay  in  the 
fact  that  they  were  very  lost  indeed,  owing  to 
several  notes  being  hopelessly  dumb,  but  they 
roused  a  faint  hope  of  eventual  success  in  the 
girl's  heart.  She  went  to  the  cupboard  on  the 
stairs  and  raked  out  some  very  dusty  old  sheets 
of  music,  pirated  editions  of  the  compositions 
before  alluded  to,  which  had  belonged  to  her  in 
her  Board  School  days.  Carrying  these  back  in 
triumph  she  proceeded  to  play  The  Swanee  River, 
with,  it  must  be  confessed,  even  more  variations 
than  of  old,  the  latter  greatly  assisted  in  "  infinite 
variety"  by  dumb  or  asthmatical  keys.  She  was 
not  very  pleased.  Still,  one  joy  was  hers.  She 


Saints  in  Society 

certainly  remembered  what  she  called  "her 
notes."  This  was  a  triumph  at  any  rate.  She 
had  not  entirely  lost  her  little  accomplishment. 
She  would  try  to  practise  now.  It  would  please 
Mark.  Some  instinct  told  her  that  it  would 
please  Mark  better  if  she  practised  when  he  was 
out ;  but  that  would  be  quite  easy,  his  time  being 
now  so  entirely  taken  up.  Nevertheless,  he  came 
in  unexpectedly  one  evening  when,  her  household 
and  self-set  charitable  duties  over,  she  sat  at  the 
wheezy  instrument  with  knitted  brow,  trying  to 
evolve  one  of  Mendelssohn's  "Songs  without 
Words"  from  its  snarling  depths.  Unlike  the 
song,  Mark  was  by  no  means  without  words  on 
this  occasion :  he  found  quite  a  torrent.  Still,  he 
laughed,  and  was  kind  enough,  and  when  she, 
looking  rather  snubbed,  wistfully  closed  the  in- 
strument, said,  "Show  us  your  music.  What  is 
the  thing?"  She  told  him  shamefacedly. 

"Can  you  play  all  these?"  he  said,  indicating 
the  heap  of  pieces  with  some  astonishment. 

"Yes,"  she  replied,  "most  of  them.  I  'm  out 
of  practice  and  I  was  trying  to  look  them  up. 
That  was  all." 

"What  made  you  do  that?  I  Ve  never  heard 
you  even  try  all  the  time  we  Ve  been  married." 


Saints  in  Society  137 

"Well,"  she  said  slowly,  fingering  the  battered 
music  folios,  "  Dorcas  says  ladies  know  music  and 
French,  and  do  good  to — to  others.  And  don't 
ever  go  to  music-halls.  And  don't  ever  over- 
dress. I  thought  I  'd  begin  with  the  music." 

He  looked  at  her  amusedly,  pulling  at  his  pipe, 
which  he  had  lighted.  He  had  sat  down  by  the  fire. 

"Oh,  come,  you  began  with  some  of  the  works 
of  charity  first,  didn't  you?  I  heard  something 
about  what  you  did  for  those  miserable  brats  of 
Ball's.  Then  you  don't  over-dress — not  now. 
You  look  as  neat  as  may  be  in  that  blue  serge. 
That  sort  of  thing  shows  off  your  figure  well,  and 
you  look  quite  the  thing  in  it.  You  have  n't  been 
to  a  music-hall  either  for  months  now.  Absolutely 
I  see  nothing  left  for  you  to  learn  but  the  French." 

She  shook  her  head  several  times,  but  looked 
pleased  for  all  that. 

"Would  you  like  some  lessons  in  your  music?" 
he  said.  "I  met  that  poor  chap  Fortescue  the 
other  day.  He  asked  me  to  remember  him  if  I 
heard  of  any  likely  pupils.  He  always  taught  the 
piano  well,  though  he  thinks  he  's  a  composer  and 
wastes  his  time  trying  his  hand  at  that  game. 
He  's  very  hard  up  as  usual.  You  can  have  a 
term  from  him  if  you  like." 


138  Saints  in  Society 

She  jumped  at  the  idea.  She  would  like  it.  So 
she  was  started  at  once  into  lessons  from  Fortescue, 
lessons  which  took  her  almost  daily  to  the  com- 
paratively affluent  neighbourhood  of  the  Vauxhall 
Bridge  Road,  where  Fortescue  lived  in  rooms. 
Her  teacher  was  a  tall,  thin,  mild-eyed  man  of 
fifty,  with  dejected  grey  hair  and  a  limp  mous- 
tache: the  joke  against  him  was  that  he  called 
himself  a  gentleman  and  said  he  came  of  a  very 
ancient  family;  a  very  good  joke  to  a  certain 
type  of  mind,  because  he  was  obviously  down  at 
heel  and  the  elbows  of  his  blue  coat  were  shiny. 
But  he  did,  nevertheless,  come  of  a  good  family. 
He  was  himself  an  Oxford  man,  and  he  was  the 
last,  the  very  last,  of  a  line  of  gallant  gentlemen 
who  had  once  ruled  their  mighty  acres  with  a 
vigorous  hand.  In  this  he  spoke  the  truth:  it 
was  about  the  only  subject  upon  which  he  did 
so,  by-the-bye,  and  as  a  consequence  it  was  al- 
ways taken  by  his  friends  to  be  a  lie.  He  had  been 
an  organist  at  a  provincial  cathedral,  but  his 
mania  for  compositions  that  an  ignorant  world 
for  ever  left  without  recognition,  together  with  a 
taste  for  imbibing,  had  brought  him  down  to  the 
post  of  hack  teacher  and  music  copyist  he  now 
occupied. 


Saints  in  Society  139 

In  Mrs.  Hading  he  found  a  quiet  and  rather 
stolidly  persevering  pupil,  an  awe-stricken  ad- 
mirer of  those  compositions  which  had  been  his 
ruin,  and  a  blessed  little  source  of  income.  So 
they  became  friends. 

When  Clo  first  saw  her  teacher  he  came  forward 
from  the  shadows  of  his  shabby  room  and  bowed 
very  low  over  her  hand,  quite  naturally.  At 
first  she  thought  he  was  "  foreign."  But  she  soon 
corrected  her  mistake.  Her  teacher  spoke  the 
most  perfect  English  with  an  exceedingly  refined 
accent,  and  though  his  blue  coat  was  too  short  in 
the  sleeves  and  appeared  to  have  been  made  for 
somebody  else,  and  his  boots  had  little  splits  at 
the  sides,  his  hands  were  beautiful  and  scrupul- 
ously kept,  and  his  ways  were  of  the  gentlest. 
Long,  long  in  the  dim  past  there  had  been  a 
Fortescue  ancestor  who  had  played  a  striped  lute 
in  a  sunbeam-haunted  courtyard  with  just  such 
exquisite  hands,  and  who  had  spoken  in  just  such 
inflections,  and  the  dust  and  the  faded  finery  of 
the  lodgings  in  Vauxhall  could  not  quite  obscure 
these  graces.  Clo  at  least  recognised  them  for 
what  they  were  really  worth,  in  some  dim  way. 
She  went  home  and  said  to  Mark: 

"  Mr.  Fortescue  really  is  a  gentleman." 


140  Saints  in  Society 

"He  's  a  good  teacher,"  said  Mark,  "but,  poor 
chap,  he  's  got  little  chance  of  the  other  thing." 

"Oh,  I  didn't  speak  of  chances,"  said  Clo;  "I 
mean  he  can't  help  being  it.  He  talks  like — like 
Lord  Vade." 

"Lord  Henry  Vade,  you  should  say,"  put  in 
Mark.  "I  've  told  you  that  before.  You  should- 
n't say  Lord  Vade.  It  gives  you  away  as  being 
so  ignorant  of  the  right  things  to  know.  I  'm  a 
man  of  the  people  myself — I  care  nothing  for  your 
aristocrats,  not  I — but  I  like  things  called  by 
their  right  names."  But  he  teased  her  about  her 
belief  in  Fortescue's  gentility,  which  he  regarded 
as  chimerical. 

Later  on  Clo  gave  him  a  sample  of  her  teacher's 
success  with  her  music,  which  so  pleased  Mark 
that  he  brought  out  some  cigarettes  that  Vade 
had  given  him,  and  told  her  to  give  them  to 
Fortescue  as  a  present  from  himself.  The  cigar- 
ettes were  in  a  pretty  box.  This  she  did.  Poor 
Fortescue  was  so  unaffectedly  delighted  at  the 
small  attention,  and  eyed  the  things  so  eagerly 
during  the  lesson,  that  at  its  conclusion  Clo 
begged  him  to  light  one.  She  had  an  idea  she 
ought  to. 

There  are  different  fashions  in  the  smoking  of 


Saints  in  Society  141 

cigarettes,  of  course.  Sometimes  for  whole  de- 
cades you  don't  light  them  at  all,  sometimes  you 
never  remove  them  from  your  mouth  till  they  are 
smoked,  and  so  on  indefinitely.  But  in  For- 
tescue's  young  days  (the  "Sixties")  you  puffed 
at  them  very  hard,  and  alternately  with  this 
pulled  them  out  of  your  mouth  and  held  them 
away  from  you  with  a  great  flourish  high  up  in 
the  air,  and  again  puffed  them,  and  so  on.  That 
mode  belonged  to  the  doggish  fashion  of  wearing 
your  hat  on  one  side  and  calling  girls  "gals,"  and 
"sporting"  lavender  kids.  In  the  cloud  of  that 
tobacco  smoke  (they  were  very  good  cigarettes) 
poor  Fortescue  perhaps  saw  a  dream  of  some  such 
bygone  gaieties — a  coach  and  four  to  the  Grand 
at  Brighton:  champagne,  chignons,  and  arch 
women — for  he  tossed  off  his  little  weed  with 
flourish  after  flourish  till  Clo,  much  impressed, 
decided  to  tell  Mark  about  it  and  see  if  he  could 
not  be  persuaded  to  adopt  such  a  course  with  his 
pipe.  She  was  so  sure  it  was  the  proper  thing. 

This  incident  took  place  at  the  conclusion  of 
one  of  her  lessons.  In  the  rush  of  her  genuine 
admiration  of  his  manners  she  confided  a  little  of 
her  ambitions  to  Fortescue,  telling  him  a  little 
haltingly  why  she  was  taking  the  music  lessons. 


142  Saints  in  Society 

Fortescue,  who  had  hitherto  been  mainly  ab- 
sorbed in  the  fact  that  he  was  taking  the  money, 
became  interested  at  once  in  this  project,  praised 
her  effort  very  kindly,  and  offered  magnanimously 
to  correct  her  occasionally  in  her  speech. 

"I  thought  I  spoke  right,"  she  said,  a  little 
crestfallen  at  this  new  stumbling-block. 

"Rightly,"  said  Fortescue,  gently.  "In  one 
sense  you  are  perfect,  my  dear  young  madam,  as 
you  are.  But  if  you  do  not  wish " 

"  Oh,  no,  do  please  tell  me  if  I  go  wrong,"  she 
answered.  And  he  agreed.  So  the  broken-down 
music-teacher  became  also  the  instructor  in  polite 
speech  and  deportment,  and  Clo  began  to  learn 
more  than  Killarney  with  variations  at  his 
courteous  hands.  She  was  a  born  imitator,  with 
the  additional  advantage  of  being  blindly  tena- 
cious of  whatever  she  willingly  took  up.  It  was 
this  that  made  her  worth  teaching.  In  two 
months  she  had  practically  corrected  the  faults 
of  her  speech,  had  lost,  or  was  rapidly  losing,  her 
Cockney  twang,  and  had  learned  the  following 
elegancies — "  how  to  enter  a  room  for  a  morning 
call,"  "  how  to  greet  an  equal  upon  introduction," 
"how  to  take  tea  as  a  lady  should,"  and  so  on, 
from  the  repertoire  of  her  gallant  teacher.  They 


Saints  in  Society  143 

were  little  bygone  courtesies  that  poor  Fortescue 
taught,  but  they  were  genuine  enough,  and  had 
their  root  whence  all  true  courtesy  springs 
— Si  kindly  heart.  Their  watch- words  were  dig- 
nity and  deference,  two  very  graceful  things 
though  a  little  elbowed  out  of  the  way  to-day  by 
their  two  loathsome  opposites.  They  went  in 
for  fine  little  subtleties,  such  as  the  ceremonious 
reverence  for  age,  the  observance  of  small  kind- 
nesses, modesty  and  tact.  Fortescue  had  out- 
of-date  ideas  on  refinement:  he  advised  the 
repressing  of  the  voice  from  a  shriek  to  a  modu- 
lated tone ;  he  counselled  a  walk  instead  of  a  self- 
confident  swagger;  he  greatly  discountenanced 
rude  staring;  he  thought  that  a  woman  who 
looked  sheer  at  another  woman's  dress  with  eyes 
like  motor  lamps  was  impudence  personified,  and 
said  so. 

"Still,"  he  remarked  sadly,  "it  is  quite  usual. 
You  must  expect  to  encounter  it.  Some  day  she 
will  go  out  of  fashion  and  modify  herself.  But 
at  present  impertinent  curiosity  does  not  meet 
with  the  snubs  it  should.'* 

People  hurrying  along  the  Vauxhall  Bridge 
Road  those  fine  spring  evenings,  meeting  a  slip  of 
a  girl  with  earnest  green  eyes  carrying  a  music- 


144  Saints  in  Society 

portfolio  and  apparently  lost  in  thought,  would 
have  defined  her  possibly  as  a  Polytechnic  student 
or  a  rather  fine-looking  dressmaker's  assistant. 
She  would  hardly  have  been  distinguished  from 
hundreds  of  other  pale,  handsome  London  girls 
of  the  struggling  classes,  except  that  she  was  fair 
and  they  are  generally  dark-haired,  and  she  was 
perhaps  a  little  taller  than  the  average.  They 
would  never  have  thought  that  she  was  working, 
as  a  tiny  beaver  works  at  his  pathetic,  laborious 
little  townships,  at  a  small  fairy  structure  of  her 
own,  made  of  quite  as  poor  materials,  and  quite 
as  liable  to  be  rudely  swept  away  by  torrent, 
storm,  or  tempest,  except  that  there  is  a  wide, 
protecting  power  that  guards  and  shelters  such 
little  blind  city-makers. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THREE  weeks  after  the  foregoing  events,  weeks 
fraught  with  passionate  interest  to  one  small 
group  of  people  at  least,  Lady  Listower  was 
driving  home  through  the  Park  in  no  happy 
mood.  It  was  a  glorious  April  day,  one  of  the 
first  really  sunshiny  days  after  a  long  and  foggy 
winter,  and  though  early  in  the  year  there  was 
quite  a  small  crowd  of  carriages  and  silent  electric 
motor  broughams  spinning  along  the  familiar 
bistre-coloured  way.  The  sun  glanced  in  gaily 
among  the  thin  stems  of  the  trees,  still  "birth- 
bare,"  as  Rossetti  has  called  it,  with  little  gummy 
points  and  greenish  tips  just  beginning  to  appear ; 
and  the  snowdrops  still  shone  pure  and  pale  in 
the  grass,  and  the  orange  and  purple  flowers  of 
the  crocuses  stood  up  erect  in  the  greenness  like 
an  army  of  gorgeous  knights  arrayed  for  the 
jousts  in  a  Golden  Age  of  chivalry. 

Lady  Listower  wore  furs  and  a  toque  of  Parma 
violets,  and  should  have  looked  well  in  spite  of 

10 

145 


146  Saints  in  Society 

the  immensity  of  the  black  toupee  and  a  certain 
purpling  of  her  face  in  the  keen  spring  wind ;  but 
she  looked  cross  and  haughty,  and  when  she  did 
this  she  was  not  beautiful.  Neither,  indeed, 
would  Venus  have  been:  nevertheless,  it  is  a 
favourite  mode.  Ill-humour  brought  out  in  Lady 
Listower  just  sufficient  resemblance  to  a  nasty- 
tempered  parrot  to  make  it  advisable  for  her  to 
keep  her  face  in  control :  for  she  could  smile  very 
nicely,  yet  rarely  would. 

There  were  several  very  pretty  women  about 
that  afternoon.  Lady  Listower  bowed  to  two  or 
three  and  cut  four  as  part  of  her  daily  duty,  and 
stared  hard  at  another  who  waved  to  her,  a  young 
and  sufficiently  handsome  woman  who  had  just 
gone  into  mourning  and  had  consequently  dyed 
her  hair  red  by  way  of  contrast,  with  no  warning 
to  her  neighbours,  with  the  result  that  one  at 
least  did  not  know  her  for  the  moment.  Where- 
upon she  tossed  her  newly-tinted  head  and 
screwed  up  her  nose  and  said :  "  I  hate  that  horrid 
old  Listower,  with  her  frowsy  old  wig.  Let  her 
go  in  for  her  old  bird  crusades — what  is  it? — 
Protection  of  Song-birds? — and  keep  out  of  my 
way.  No  wonder  she  's  bird  mad — her  head  's  a 
regular  crow's  nest." 


Saints  in  Society  H7 

But  Lady  Listower  did  not  hear.  By  the 
Achilles  Statue  she  met  Henry,  and  suddenly  her 
dull,  wrinkled,  violet  face  brightened  all  over,  like 
a  flash  of  sunshine.  Henry  came  up  at  once  with 
cheerfulness — he  was  a  dutiful  boy  in  quite  small 
matters — and  said,  without  a  blush: 

"Mamma  dear!" 

"My  dearest  boy,"  she  answered,  leaning  out 
and  holding  his  hands,  "  how  long  it  is,  how  very, 
very  long,  since  you  have  been  to  see  your  old 
mother.  Where  have  you  been?" 

He  laughed.  "Good  heavens,  where  haven't  I 
been?  I  Ve  had  no  sleep  for  weeks — don't  I 
look  it?  But  you  heard,  of  course?  I  got  him 
through — he  's  in." 

"The  rabbit-skin  man?"  said  her  ladyship, 
looking  fondly  into  his  eyes.  "  I  heard  some- 
thing— yes.  So  he  got  in?  Where  are  you 
-going?" 

"Nowhere,  for  once,"  he  answered. 

"  Come  to  see  me,"  she  said. 

"  I  was  coming  to  see  you." 

He  said  this  with  great  sweetness,  though  it 
was  entirely  untrue.  He  had  come  from  his  club 
and  was  taking  a  breath  of  air  before  going  down 
to  the  House  after  his  eternal  hobby.  But  he 


148  Saints  in  Society 

wanted  his  mother's  help  about  something  and 
here  was  a  chance  to  get  it. 

"Come  back  with  me  at  once,  my  angel,"  she 
answered  rapturously.  The  angel,  very  pinched 
about  the  waist,  got  in  and  sat  beside  her.  Her 
plain  face  was  changed  utterly  by  the  effulgence 
of  her  expression,  the  wonderful  mystery  we  call 
the  "mother  look."  Between  the  rouged  face 
then  and  the  Madonna  purity  of  Dorcas  Deane's, 
could  they  have  been  put  side  by  side,  there  was 
now  a  strong  resemblance.  No  wonder  Henry 
thought  his  mother  "not  a  bad-looking  woman," 
and  was  rather  proud  of  her  than  otherwise.  He 
only  saw  her  when  her  soul  was  in  her  eyes. 

"Mother,  I  want  you  to  help  me,"  he  said  at 
once.  Angels  can  be  very  prompt. 

"What  is  it?  Say,  and  it  is  done,"  she  an- 
swered. 

"I  want  you  to  receive  the  rabbit-skin  man," 
he  said,  "and  his  wife." 

' '  Receive  them,  dear  ?  How  ? ' '  she  asked  gently . 
"  In  their  donkey-cart?" 

"You  see,"  said  Henry,  "they  haven't  got  a 
donkey.  They  would  have  to  come  by  train,  or 
tram,  or  something.  But  they  would  behave 
quite  quietly,  really.  All  I  want  you  to  do  is  to 


Saints  in  Society  149 

be  nice  to  them  for  about  half  an  hour — show 
them  what  a  typical  great  lady  at  home  can  be 
like.  Won't  you?" 

This  went  home. 

1 '  Certainly— when  ? ' ' 

"  Any  time.     To-morrow  ? ' ' 

"Yes,  I  can  arrange  that  for  you,  dear.  You 
know  that.  What  will  they  do?  Shall  I  offer 
beer?" 

"Oh,  no,  dear.  Not  even  whelks.  Tea  would 
do." 

"Ah,  tea — tea.  I  must  remember.  Do  they 
wear  pearl  buttons?" 

"  I  don't  think  so,"  said  Henry,  knitting  his 
brows  as  if  trying  to  recollect;  adding  eagerly, 
"They  wash  their  hands — at  least  he  does.  I 
saw  him." 

"How  interesting,"  said  Lady  Listower;  add- 
ing: "I  suppose  they  are  quite  safe?  Wouldn't 
burgle,  or  pickpocket,  or  anything?  I  'd  better 
warn  James  to  keep  an  eye  on  them  in  the 
hall." 

"  Oh,  I  think  not,  dearest.  You  see  they  are 
not  in  actual  want  or  that  sort  of  thing.  I  Ve 
seen  to  that.  All  I  want  you  to  help  me  in  is  to 
teach  the  man  to  wake  up  to  some  sense  of  the 


150  Saints  in  Society 

world  he  lives  in — to  see  something  of  the  people 
not  of  his  immediate  world." 

"  I  see.  You  mean,  as  he  is  eventually  to 
abolish  the  House  of  Lords  he  may  as  well  have 
a  look  at  their  furniture  first  to  see  what  he  will 
take  himself?" 

"No,  it  isn't  quite  that.  You  see,  clever  and 
brilliant  as  he  is — he — he  's  such  a  Christian." 

11  And  you  want  me  to  teach  him  a  little  of  the 
other  side." 

"No,  dear.  Only  that  Christianity  is  possible 
apart  from  black  kid  gloves  and  shiny  boots." 

"I  see.  And  is  his  wife  a  Christian?  You 
study  character  so  closely — you  must  know." 

"  No,  I  don't  think  so.  She  's  rather  flighty 
or  something,  I  hear.  She  jibs.  She  is  vulgar, 
and  all  that,  of  course;  that  goes  without  saying. 
But  she  's  rather  a  'drag,  or  she  will  be  rather  a 
drag,  upon  him  unless  some  one  shows  her  the 
'better  part'  soon.  I  've  got  that  man  at  heart, 
mother.  I  mean  to  make  him  great.  I  don't 
want  it  all  spoiled  by  a  little  Cockney  cat." 

"They  ought  to  be  very  grateful,  sweet,"  she 
answered,  as  she  stepped  out  of  the  carriage  and 
went  indoors,  followed  by  the  mincing  angel, 
more  than  ever  resembling  Philip  of  Spain  after 


Saints  in  Society  151 

the  manner  of  Velasquez,  with  his  light  blue  eyes 
like  a  candle  flame. 

In  the  smaller  drawing-room  they  found  Vera 
just  returned  from  Princes'  with  two  men,  pour- 
ing out  tea  and  laughing  gaily.  Vera  was  a 
downy  impression  of  immense  white  furs  and  a 
Paris  hat  like  a  cake  resting  on  her  nose ;  she  was 
very  neat  and  taut  about  the  feet,  and  absurdly 
over-scented  with  something  like  prayer-books 
and  bird  seed  combined — a  new  Russian  per- 
fume then  in  vogue.  Lady  Listower,  in  address- 
ing her  and  her  friends,  had  completely  got  back 
the  pug  expression,  and  returned  to  her  ancient 
truculence  of  manner  as  by  the  passing  of  a 
magician's  wand.  The  two  men,  upon  the  en- 
trance of  this  stern  vision,  fell  into  a  feeble 
attempt  at  wisdom,  or  rather  graver  folly  than 
that  with  which  they  had  regaled  the  lively  Vera, 
but  Lady  Listower  remained  obdurate.  Con- 
sequently, after  a  decent  interval,  the  pair 
departed  with  many  entirely  insincere  protesta- 
tions of  flippant  sorrow  for  other  appointments. 

"Well,"  said  Veronica  to  Henry,  "I  hope  you 
are  satisfied  with  your  tiresome  man — I  forget 
his  name.  He  got  in,  did  n't  he?  Good  for  you. 
Now,  whom  else  will  you  take  up?" 


152  Saints  in  Society 

"His  wife,"  said  Vade,  cheerfully,  "that  is  the 
next  business." 

"That  little  Cockney  person  who  saved  me 
from  a  scene,  do  you  mean?  How  really  funny! 
I  should  advise  a  shampoo  first ;  then  a  grammar 
book." 

"No,"  said  Henry,  "you  can't  begin  with  the 
surface.  I  shall  put  before  her  first  the  ideal  of 
an  English  lady." 

"  How  dull,"  said  Vera.     "  What  is  that  ? " 

"  Mother,"  he  answered  with  his  eyelids  lowered. 

"Oh— oh— oh!"  laughed  Vera,  "that  fearful 
person  and  mother!  Is  she  really  coming  here? 
When?" 

"To-morrow." 

"Oh!  I  must  be  in.  I  must  see  the  play. 
What  a  ridiculous  thing!  I  shall  watch  to  see 
her  slip  on  the  parquet  and  bite  her  bread  and 
butter.  Mother  is  charitable.  Costers  to  tea! 
What  next?" 

When  the  following  afternoon  arrived,  Lord 
Henry  appeared  with  his  protige  and  entered  his 
mother's  sanctum  at  the  time  named.  This  was 
a  vast  white  apartment,  with  yellow  panels,  on 
which  were  poppies  and  daisies  and  raised  golden 
corn.  It  was  a  very  gaudy  apartment,  full  of 


Saints  in  Society  153 

gold  chairs,  and  tables  covered  with  poppy- 
coloured  damask,  off  which  you  slid  as  continually 
as  off  Mrs.  Tombs 's  black  horse-hair,  unless  you 
kept  your  mind  well  on  the  matter.  But  it  had 
what  Mrs.  Tombs's  had  not — some  easy  lounges 
and  billowy  seats  that  one  could  really  sit  on 
and  lounge  on,  inviting  with  soft  primrose 
cushions  and  white  daintinesses. 

Lady  Listower  herself,  stately  in  pure  white 
fine  cloth  and  chiffon,  with  a  few  mauve  jewelled 
brooches  and  lace  pins  among  her  fluffinesses, 
came  forward  to  greet  the  "Costers,"  as  their 
names  were  announced,  with  an  unusual  geni- 
ality thrown  into  the  Rochmane  belligerence. 

She  saw  a  well-dressed  man  with  a  face  of 
startling  interest  and  character  come  forward  to 
greet  her  quite  at  his  ease ;  this  to  her  amazement, 
though  she  did  not  show  it.  This,  then,  was 
Mark  Hading.  But  the  wife  took  her  a  little 
more  by  surprise.  For  though  plainly  dressed 
in  a  grey  stuff  walking  dress  and  a  dark,  plain, 
claret-coloured  hat,  a  colour  which  suited  her 
remarkably,  she  struck  no  note  of  vulgarity  of 
any  kind.  She  was  strangely  metamorphosed, 
considering  her  dress  was  as  usual,  save  that  her 
gloves  and  boots  were  new.  The  necklace  of 


154  Saints  in  Society 

pearls  with  the  ecstatic  motto  "ten  three"  was 
gone  forever,  and  in  its  place  was  a  neat  stock. 
Gone  forever,  too,  was  the  lumpy,  untidy  "halo," 
and  the  abundant  hair  was  simply  done  in  a  knot 
at  the  back  of  the  neck,  its  soft  pale  brown  or 
honey  colour  being  now  for  the  first  time  apparent. 
Her  naturally  pale  face  was  a  little  paler  as  she 
entered,  owing  to  her  shyness;  but  her  large, 
deep-set,  aquamarine  green  eyes,  under  the 
rather  dark  brows,  shone  out  of  its  firm  contour 
with  great  beauty,  and  the  natural  expression  of 
reticence,  defiance,  sulks,  what  you  will,  which 
above  all  things  might  have  stamped  her  of 
coster  blood,  passed  easily  for  stately  reserve 
when  combined  with  her  erect  walk,  good  features, 
and  neat  dress. 

She  replied  with  simplicity  to  Lady  Listower's 
greeting,  and  with  that  wonderful  self-possession 
and  dignity  of  the  Cockney  girl  upon  occasions, 
she  quite  calmly  took  the  seat  offered  her,  and 
did  not,  as  Vera  had  predicted,  slide  on  the  par- 
quet. So  much  for  Fortescue. 

Lady  Listower  talked  rather  fluently  for  some 
minutes  to  give  her  visitors  a  chance  to  get  used 
to  their  surroundings.  She  really  pitied  them, 
and  wished  to  relieve  their  excess  of  embarrass- 


Saints  in  Society  155 

ment.  Hading  watched  her  very  closely,  she 
thought — he  seemed  to  be  studying  her;  and 
that  he  might  see  a  great  lady  at  home  to 
full  advantage  she  addressed  herself  to  him 
with  the  best  charm  of  which  she  was  capable. 
This  was  comparatively  easy,  dear  Henry  being 
in  the  room.  She  worked  very  hard  for  his 
sake. 

Then  tea  was  brought  in,  followed  by  Vera,  in 
a  pearl-coloured  soft  satin  tea-gown  embroidered 
in  tiny  festooned  roses,  an  Empire  garment  from 
Liberty's,  with  long  pink  chiffon  sleeves.  Her 
dark  brown  hair  dressed  high  with  a  great  comb, 
&  V  Empire.  She  nodded  to  them  all  coldly, 
and  then,  frankly  curious,  she  sat  and  stared  at 
Clo  from  a  lounge  into  which  she  had  apparently 
fallen  on  entrance;  but  Clo,  inured  by  Mrs. 
Trinder,  took  her  tea  with  her  own  accustomed 
stolidity  and  continued  to  answer  Lady  Lis- 
tower's  occasional  questions  with  a  simplicity 
in  itself  well-bred  because  unstudied. 

"Our  house,"  she  was  heard  to  say  in  answer 
to  Lady  Listower's  kindly  inquiry  about  her 
husband's  work  and  home,  "is  a  very  small  one 
— too  small  for  you  to  imagine,  I  suppose.  We 
had  a  lodger,  but  we  have  had  to  get  rid  of  her  to 


156  Saints  in  Society 

allow  my  husband  more  space  for  his  new  busi- 
ness affairs." 

"How  very  interesting,"  said  Lady  Listower, 
gravely,  as  though  lodgers  were  a  special  study 
or  cult  that  it  would  be  a  new  idea  to  take  up, 
especially  in  a  state  of  evacuation.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  she  was  not  too  clear  what  they  were. 
She  thought  vaguely  that  they  were  generally 
medical  students,  if  they  were  not  children  re- 
covering from  the  measles,  with  a  train  of  nurses ; 
or  in  very  remote  East-End  places,  comers, 
dressed  in  their  shirt-sleeves,  who  cooked  things 
in  frying-pans  over  meagre  but  very  lurid  fires. 
This  she  had  got  from  sensational  literature,  for 
which  she  had  a  violent  avidity.  She  thought  it 
a  pity  Clo  had  got  rid  of  hers ;  he  added  so  much 
to  the  local  colour  and  was  so  vividly  picturesque, 
doubtless,  especially  if  of  the  coiner  variety.  So 
she  said,  "How  really  interesting,"  in  a  medita- 
tive voice.  Clo  did  not  think  it  was,  however. 

"No,"  she  said  simply,  "it  isn't  indeed — it 's 
very  dull.  Especially  if  they  play  the  cornet,  or 
don't  pay;  but  ours  was  different,  a  religious 
woman.  Not  that  they  pay — the  religious  ones 
— in  another  sense,  you  know.  They  're  usually 
so  poor." 


Saints  in  Society  157 

She  looked  frankly  into  Lady  Listower's  eyes 
with  an  innocence  and  confidence  that  no  lessons 
in  deportment  could  hope  to  give.  Lady  Lis- 
tower's blue  blood  here  showed  up  true  to  itself — 
she  did  not  smile.  Chivalry  was  of  her  veins. 
A  weak  thing  confided  in  her,  she  could  not 
trample  on  it.  Gravely  she  said:  "Yes,  I  sup- 
pose they  are.  Poor  dear  things!  But  you 
know  how  nice  of  them.  How  biblical.  I  like 
great  characters."  She  glanced  at  Hading. 
"Isn't  your  husband  a  great  character?  He 
looks  it.  Such  a  fine  head — like  those  tiresome 
old  Puritans  and  people  who  killed  Charles  the 
First.  Horrid  old  things,  you  know,  but  very 
good.  A  saint  rampant,  and  all  that." 

Clo  answered  that  she  thought  that  he  was 
very  good  and  very  great.  She  knew  she  was 
not  worthy  of  him,  and  this  large,  grave,  grey- 
eyed  great  lady,  who  was  dressed  like  a  queen 
and  who  spoke  so  nicely,  must  have  seen  it,  so 
she  said  so,  quite  calmly. 

"Do  you  know,"  answered  her  ladyship,  smil- 
ing as  one  would  to  a  child,  or  as  she  would  to 
dear  Henry,  "  I  am  going  to  make  him  talk  to 
me  and  see!" 

Hading  came  over  to  her,  and  they  had  a  long 


158  Saints  in  Society 

talk,  or  rather  he  did,  for  he  talked  extremely 
well  and  with  remarkable  fluency.  She  let  him 
do  so  because  she  was  studying  him,  but  even 
she  was  astonished  at  his  brilliance,  while  Vero- 
nica openly  drew  nearer  to  listen  to  its  magic, 
taken  out  of  her  critical  mood  completely. 

When  Mark  and  his  wife  had  gone  Henry 
asked  his  mother  what  she  thought  of  him. 

"A  clever  person,"  she  answered;  "he  will 
certainly  get  on." 

Then  Henry  said:  "You  can  have  no  opinion 
of  his  wife;  those  people's  women  are  so  impos- 
sible." 

His  mother  paused.  She  looked  into  her  pri- 
vate pigeon-holes  of  classification  and  hesitated, 
because  Henry  and  Vera  awaited  her  words 
and  she  wanted  to  be  true  to  herself  and  to  them 
both.  Lady  Listower  called  everybody  who  was 
not  in  the  Peerage  "poor  dear  souls,"  and  even 
some  who  were  in  it  "quite  respectable."  The 
very  poor  whom  you  helped  with  blankets  and 
tea  were  "those  sad  creatures  in  the  East,"  and 
the  rest  of  the  world  "persons"  qualified  ac- 
cording to  deserts  as  "terrible"  or  "honest"; 
for  instance,  people  you  just  could  n't  invite  to 


Saints  in  Society  159 

dinner  were  "terrible  persons,"  and  people  you 
only  just  could  were  "honest  persons." 

But  Clo  was  a  new  sort.  In  a  way  she  swayed 
between  "a  sad  creature  in  the  East"  (only 
you  really  could  n't  give  her  blankets)  and  a 
"terrible  person"  (only  of  course  she  did  not 
even  dream  of  an  invitation  to  dinner).  Sud- 
denly an  inspiration  came  to  that  daughter  of  a 
line  of  Dukes. 

"She  is  an  original  soul,"  she  said  gravely. 

Then  Henry  knew  his  hobby  was  safe.  He 
had  only  heard  that  term  applied  by  his  mother 
once  before,  and  that  was  to  a  half-mad,  but 
fascinating  ex-Empress  to  whom  she  had  done 
a  service  when  Lord  Listower  was  Ambassador 
to  a  great  Continental  centre.  Clo  had  been 
signally  honoured. 


CHAPTER  X 

A  S  the  months  went  by  the  astonishing  suc- 
**  cess  of  the  new  Labour  member  became 
definitely  assured. 

The  General  Election  had  been  a  sharp  fight 
of  fluctuating  possibility  as  to  issues,  but  had 
terminated  in  the  return  of  the  Opposition  by 
a  shadowy  majority.  Crawshay's  cousins,  thrown 
out  of  office  at  last,  lay  about  in  a  state  of  ex- 
haustion. One  wrote  a  biography  while  in  this 
condition,  consisting  mainly  of  long  extracts 
from  the  Times  of  the  'Sixties  and  'Seventies 
referring  to  the  public  speeches  of  the  subject  of 
the  memoir,  a  quite  ghostly  person  from  a  bio- 
graphical point  of  view,  whose  name  (that  of  a 
distinguished  statesman)  only  occurred  at  rare 
and  necessary  intervals  in  the  work,  and  whose 
personality  never  once.  Another  cousin  turned 
Wesleyan,  or  said  he  was  going  to  do  and  did  n't 
which  does  nearly  as  well  for  interviewers;  and 

another  made  a  speech  in  the  Midlands  which 

1 60 


Saints  in  Society  161 

fizzled  and  died  out  like  a  damp  rocket  on  the 
fifth  of  November.  While  the  Patent  Food  one 
founded  a  Boudoir  League,  to  keep  his  party 
together  by  means  of  feminine  influence,  but 
unfortunately  chose  such  an  ugly  Duchess  to 
head  it  that  it  never  "caught"  at  all,  and  wound 
up  its  affairs  in  bridge  and  scandal;  in  which 
pursuits  even  the  ugly  Duchess  basely  joined. 
So  the  Patent  Food  cousin  dabbled  in  Spiritual- 
ism in  sheer  disgust,  and  revenged  himself  on 
Femininity  by  refusing  to  marry  any  one  of  its 
units  and  giving  out  dark  hints  to  the  cheaper 
Press  world  of  the  individual  ladies  who  had  to 
suffer  that  humiliation.  Crawshay,  exhilarated 
by  the  glorious  feeling  that  he  had  helped  to  bring 
about  this  glad  consummation,  plunged  hotly 
into  social  life  and  sports,  and  metaphorically 
snapped  his  fingers  with  real  glee.  It  was  a 
pleasure  to  see  him;  and  to  hear  him  bluster 
his  rude  rejoicing  an  absolute  tonic. 

But  Hading's  chance  had  come,  and  he  was 
the  last  man  to  make  a  hash  of  it  at  this  stage. 
His  maiden  speech,  when  the  time  came,  was  a 
revelation,  and  turned  all  eyes  upon  him.  One 
journalist  writing  ecstatically  to  an  important 
daily  called  it  an  "epoch-making"  speech:  and 


162  Saints  in  Society 

for  once  that  weary  old  phrase  was  true,  for 
indeed  it  was  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
speaker's  political  experience.  From  that  he 
went  on  steadily.  He  seemed  to  be  without 
fear  or  nervousness  of  any  kind;  far  from  find- 
ing his  new  duties  a  "  strain,"  as  the  year  went  on 
he  obviously  improved  in  health  and  vigour, 
and  his  long,  firmly-drawn  face  grew  more  power- 
ful in  its  magnetism  as  his  blood  improved,  and 
a  brown  and  healthy  "fitness"  took  the  place  of 
his  once  too  white  complexion.  Looks  go  a 
much  longer  way  in  the  making  of  even  a  man's 
life  than  those  who  do  not  possess  them  will  ever 
admit.  But  they  must  be  appropriate  in  their 
picturesqueness  to  suit  the  English.  You  may 
be  ever  such  a  handsome  Prime  Minister,  but  if 
you  look  like  a  Guardsman  it  will  profit  you 
nothing:  you  must  look  like  a  Prime  Minister, 
and  then,  even  with  the  soul  of  a  currant  bun, 
all  will  be  well.  Gladstone,  with  the  face  of  a 
mediaeval  bishop,  could  even  dictate  to  Canter- 
bury; while  D' Israeli,  who  looked  like  a  perfectly 
charming  Eastern  conjurer,  will  to  the  end  of 
time  rank  with  performing  mountebanks  in  many 
cloudy  minds. 

Mark's    face    was    dramatically    that    of   the 


Saints  in  Society  163 

earnest  man  of  the  people,  the  Daniel  come  to 
judgment  of  the  stage ;  and  the  fact  that  he  had 
not  a  stubbly  beard,  in  common  with  so  many  of 
his  political  brethren,  was  greatly  in  his  favour, 
and  helped  to  make  his  striking  dark  features 
more  striking  still.  Dante  faded  in  it  just  a 
little,  and  Napoleon  became  more  apparent  as  his 
health  improved:  but  his  eloquence  and  marvel- 
lous flow  of  language  notably  increased. 

His  practical  common-sense,  combined  with 
his  power  of  language,  his  absolute  courtesy 
and  perfect  command  of  his  temper  in  public 
were  a  unique  combination,  joined  as  they  were 
to  a  personal  knowledge  of  the  subject  of  Labour 
questions,  and  sufficient  learning  of  the  "book" 
order  to  enable  him  to  hold  his  own  with  any 
one  short  of  specialists.  His  opponents,  recog- 
nising a  foe  worthy  of  the  name,  tackled  him 
hotly;  and  his  celebrity  grew  with  a  rapidity 
by  no  means  usual  to  those  who  do  not  advertise. 

Some  wild  Bills  were  presented  at  the  Spring 
Session  from  both  sides  of  the  House.  One,  a 
Government  measure,  proposed  to  pull  down 
all  the  historic  houses  in  London  and  rebuild 
them  as  they  ought  to  have  been:  afterwards 
converting  them  into  free  clubs  for  the  working- 


1 64  Saints  in  Society 

man,  furnished  with  billiards,  draughts,  and 
other  amusements. 

Another  demanded  the  absolute  abolition  of 
the  Butchering  Trade,  and  had  amongst  its 
clauses  one  commanding  all  butchers  to  sub- 
scribe so  much  a  head  towards  a  fund  for  main- 
taining themselves  when  beggared.  This  meas- 
ure was  brought  forward  by  persons  who  had 
caught  hold  of  the  new  idea  that  we  eat  too 
much;  but  it  was  bitterly  attacked  by  the  Anti- 
Vivisectionists  and  others,  on  the  grounds  that 
the  butchers  had  no  right  to  compensation  at  all, 
being  lost  creatures  and  the  sole  causes  of  ap- 
pendicitis and  other  ills.  The  logic  of  the  ob- 
jection took  long  to  propound  and  was  the  cause 
of  many  heated  meetings  and  bitter  animosities. 
It  will  live  in  English  history. 

Amongst  a  host  of  others  too  numerous  and 
tedious  to  mention,  Hading  had  the  temerity 
to  introduce  one  of  his  own.  It  was  called  the 
Child  Citizen  Bill,  for  the  feeding  and  clothing 
of  children  of  our  poor  at  the  day  schools,  and 
the  institution  of  County  Council  clubs  for  such 
of  those  who  are  nightly  compelled,  by  the  misery 
and  narrowness  of  their  homes,  to  loiter  in  the 
streets  learning  the  vice  which  afterwards  makes 


Saints  in  Society  165 

them  criminals.  At  these  clubs  were  proposed 
organised  lectures  on  citizenship,  made  easy  to 
suit  the  young  hearers ;  healthy  games  and  exer- 
cises; instruction  in  various  useful  trades  and 
crafts ;  and  general  enlightenment  and  social  up- 
lifting. 

At  these  centres  an  efficient  staff  of  monitors 
was  to  be  maintained  for  the  preservation  of  dis- 
cipline; but  the  lecturers  were  to  be,  like  the 
hospital  physicians,  unremunerated.  Roughly 
these  were  its  points,  but  its  raison  d'etre  was  the 
nurturing  up  from  childhood  of  steady  citizens. 
In  a  passionate  speech,  which  took  his  hearers  by 
storm,  he  enumerated  the  want  of  some  such 
means  of  a  better  early  training  for  the  incipient 
pauper  citizen  of  London. 

He  pointecl  out  the  fact  that  the  child  of  the 
very  poor  is  at  six  years  old  a  conscious  thing 
with  decided  views  and  almost  immovable  habits, 
and  equal  to  the  better  class  of  ten  or  twelve  in 
knowledge  of  the  world,  if  not  more  than  equal. 
By  the  time  it  leaves  school  (at  fourteen  years)  it 
is  grown  up  to  all  intents  and  purposes  and  can  no 
longer  be  greatly  influenced  by  the  most  earnest 
efforts  of  Church  institutions,  clubs,  etc.,  or  those 
on  purely  non-sectarial  but  philanthropic  lines,  of 


1 66  Saints  in  Society 

which  there  were  many  in  existence.  He  said,  to 
put  it  briefly,  that  the  State  which  wanted  good, 
law-abiding  citizens  and  townsmen  must  make 
them.  If  the  conditions  of  trade,  of  labour,  of 
property,  etc.,  were  such  that  millions  of  children 
were  doomed  every  year  to  be  born  into  sur- 
roundings not  fit  for  the  housing  of  pigs,  to  be 
brought  up  breathing  the  air  of  these  surround- 
ings, and  to  mature  finally  as  ignorant,  diseased 
epitomes  of  them,  as  criminals,  wastrels,  and 
idiots,  if  this  was  so,  then  the  State  must  step  in 
and  provide  the  home  influence,  the  ideals,  the 
early  training  that  these  conditions  made  impos- 
sible. Frantic  as  the  scheme  sounded,  he  had 
his  figures  to  hand.  He  went  into  the  annual  ex- 
penditure by  the  State  on  criminals,  adult  and 
children ;  on  prisons,  reformatories,  and  houses  of 
correction;  again  on  idiot  asylums,  lunatic  asy- 
lums, workhouses,  and  refuges.  Also  the  ex- 
penditure by  the  Churches  of  all  denominations  on 
similar  institutions — such  as  clubs,  guilds,  bands 
of  hope,  happy  evenings,  and  rescue  work.  He 
estimated  that  half  this  outlay  was  unnecessary, 
that  half  of  it,  devoted  to  prevention  instead  of  to 
the  cure,  would  save  the  other  half  in  the  space  of 
ten  or  fifteen  years. 


Saints  in  Society  167 

He  is  not  to  be  defended  in  this  crude  proposi- 
tion, but  he  is  to  be  admired  for  meaning  it 
heartily,  and  at  least  himself  holding  a  noble 
vision  of  a  future  of  slum  children  made  honest, 
clear-eyed,  healthy,  useful,  and  intelligent  directly 
they  are  old  enough  to  toddle ;  and  growing  up  to 
self-respecting,  clean,  law-abiding  men  and  women. 

The  subject  was  sufficiently  sentimental  to 
create  a  sensation.  All  people  think  alike  about 
children  nowadays,  or  think  they  do :  at  any  rate, 
all  theoretically  want  them  to  be  happy.  And 
this  Bill  got  hold  of  the  attention  of  women, 
women  in  high  places,  and  was  consequently 
talked  about  considerably.  Mark's  photograph 
appearing  in  some  of  the  papers  as  the  new 
apostle  of  children  also  did  its  work,  and  Lord 
Henry  was  asked  to  show  people  the  original,  and 
to  trot  him  out  for  criticism  as  something  new. 
This  was  done,  and  Mark  got  on  flourishingly  in  a 
circle  he  otherwise  could  not  have  entered  by  hook 
or  by  crook.  He  lunched,  dined,  and  talked  with 
the  great  in  their  own  haunts,  with  one  result, 
that  his  manners,  always  good,  now  definitely 
improved  and  he  acquired  a  polish  and  charm 
quite  irresistible. 

It  naturally  followed  that  he  saw  less  and  less 


1 68  Saints  in  Society 

of  Clo,  who  could  not  be  supposed  to  accompany 
him  in  all  these  adventures.  Time  hung  a  little 
heavily  on  her  hands,  and  just  occasionally  the 
thought  of  it  pricked  him  like  a  thorn  under  the 
skin  in  the  very  midst  of  his  own  heavy  duties  or 
exhilarating  relaxations.  But  he  made  his  best 
amends  by  giving  her  what  he  thought  she 
wanted — namely,  more  money  to  spend  on  her 
dress,  and  a  servant  to  do  the  work  of  the  little 
Walworth  house ;  also  sundry  counsels  to  be  more 
friendly  with  her  neighbours,  and  little  homilies 
on  not  selfishly  shutting  oneself  up  alone, — con- 
solations gloriously  masculine. 

Meanwhile,  when  he  did  see  her  she  was  much 
quieter  than  of  old,  and  less  petulant.  She  said 
nothing  more  about  music-halls  and  pantomimes, 
diligently  practised  her  music,  was  more  clearly 
interested  in  her  little  household  affairs,  and  took 
to  a  careful  course  of  reading.  He  concluded  that 
she  was  happy  and  forebore  to  ask  questions.  He 
was  too  busy. 

One  day,  during  the  autumn,  Veronica's  motor 
came  dashing  and  snorting  up  the  small  drab 
street,  when  a  rainy  wind  blew  bits  of  yellow 
paper  and  dreary  refuse  about  its  gutters,  and  a 
tiny,  dingy  milk-cart  went  slowly  clattering  from 


Saints  in  Society  169 

door  to  door,  hailed  at  intervals  by  aproned 
ladies  at  the  doors  holding  out  meagre  glass  jugs 
for  a  "  ha'porth  "  of  the  thin  blue  liquid.  Stilling- 
fleet  was  in  the  car  with  Vera,  and  when  the  noisy 
thing  stopped  and  snorted  in  its  loud  ungracious 
way  they  both  alighted  and  rattled  loudly  on 
Clo's  little  portal.  She  saw  them  from  an  upper 
room  and  ran  down  herself  to  open  the  door. 

Vera,  ruddy  with  her  spin,  looked  large-eyed, 
dashing,  vivacious,  a  vision  of  a  livelier  world  to 
that  of  this  drab,  dull  street,  and  she  flew  at  Clo 
with  a  string  of  high-pitched,  unanswerable  ques- 
tions, which,  if  useless,  at  least  covered  the  girl's 
momentary  shyness.  She  had  an  immense  white 
fur  coat  over  a  frock  of  vivid  red,  and  her  white 
motoring  hat  was  hidden  under  a  gauzy  red  veil, 
which  she  tossed  off  from  her  beaming  face.  She 
demanded  to  be  taken  instantly  to  Clo's  sitting- 
room — she  must  see  her  house,  she  said. 

This  apartment  was  up  a  narrow  staircase — all 
the  lower  part  of  the  house  was  used  by  Mark  as 
a  sort  of  business  office,  etc.,  and  when  Vera  and 
Stillingfleet  arrived  in  it  they  found  it  already 
occupied  by  Mrs.  Deane,  who  rose  and  stood  meek- 
ly aside  as  they  entered,  and  made  to  depart. 
The  room  was  littered  with  sewing. 


170  Saints  in  Society 

"Oh!  no,  don't  go,"  said  Vera,  breezily,  "we  Ve 
only  come  to  look."  She  turned  and  studied 
Mrs.  Deane's  countenance  with  her  usual  alarm- 
ing rudeness.  "What  a  nice  face  you  've  got," 
she  said ;  "  you  are  a  sweet  person.  Who  are  you  ? 
Mr.  Hading's  sister?" 

"Oh,  no,  madam,"  she  answered,  a  painful 
blush  mounting  slowly  to  her  pale  brow,  adding, 
"I  am  the  sister  of  the  poor:  a  Mission  woman, 
that  is  all." 

"Oh,  that  sounds  nice  and  nunlike — the  sister 
of  the  poor.  Do  stay.  I  like  to  look  at  you. 
How  interesting.  Fancy.  Mrs. — Mrs. — Mrs. — 
er — oh — Hading,  what  are  all  these  clothes  on  the 
floor?  I  did  n't  know  you  had  so  many  children. 
How  many  have  you?" 

It  was  Clo's  turn  to  blush,  though  she  did  this 
more  angrily  than  shyly,  having  already  heard 
that  tone  in  the  voice  of  Mrs.  Trinder.  Lady 
Vera  was  doomed  to  remind  her  of  the  worthy 
undertaker's  wife,  she  did  not  know  why.  She 
was  not  clear-headed  enough  to  see  that  im- 
pudence in  any  class  is  pretty  much  alike. 

"Those  are  for  the  poor  children,"  she  an- 
swered, controlling  the  old  sharpness  in  her  voice 
as  best  she  could,  "  I  have  none  of  my  own.  Mrs. 


Saints  in  Society  171 

Deane  here  and  I  have  been  making  them,  and 
were  interrupted  in  the  middle  of  sorting  them 
out  into  lots  when  you  came — Lady  Veronica," 
she  added  rather  unwillingly. 

"  Oh,  I  see.  How  charming.  Do  you  work  for 
the  poor?  How  nice  of  you.  How  perfectly 
sweet.  Mr.  Hading  talks  about  them  and  you 
dress  them.  That  's  a  beautiful  idea.  Is  n't  it?" 
she  said,  turning  to  Stillingfleet,  who  was  pulling 
his  moustache  and  looking  rather  sheepish  by  the 
door. 

"I  can't  do  much,"  said  Clo,  "but  there  are 
plenty  of  children  about  here  who  need  things, 
and  I  have  time  on  my  hands.  My  husband  is  so 
good — he  gives  his  whole  time  for  them.  So 
also  does  Mrs.  Deane.  So  I  can't  be  quite 
idle." 

"Do  you?"  said  Vera,  turning  again  to  the 
gentle  Dorcas.  "  But  how  quite  beautiful  to  give 
your  whole  life  for  them,  and  how  dirty  and  in- 
fectious and  all  that.  What  horrid  swearing 
words  they  must  say.  How  interesting.  And 
what  a  pretty  uniform ;  you  look  like  the  sweetest 
Quakeress,  indeed  you  do.  Really,  I  wish  grey 
would  come  into  fashion  again,  absolutely  I  do; 
I  should  love  a  get-up  like  that.  Only  I  could  n't 


172  Saints  in  Society 

wear  my  hair  so.  And  you  look  so  sweet,  so 
happy,  somehow — what  is  it?" 

"Madam,"  answered  the  other,  shyly,  "you 
say  many  kind  things  in  the  goodness  of  your 
young  heart.  But  they  are  too  good  for  one  like 
myself.  Please  say  no  more." 

"But  you  do,"  persisted  Vera,  "most  awfully 
sweet.  What  is  it  ?  How  do  you  do  it  ? " 

"My  lady,"  she  said  softly,  "I  love  God,  and 
my  neighbour.  I  know  of  nothing  else." 

Vera  said  "  Oh! "  with  a  jerk,  as  if  she  had  been 
sharply  hit,  and  went  a  little  red  under  her  make- 
up. After  a  little  more  of  such  talk  she  rose  to 
go,  and  rustled  noisily  down  the  narrow  staircase, 
shedding  desperately  the  perfume,  like  prayer- 
books  and  bird  seed  and  new  railway  carriages,  in 
which  her  soul  delighted.  Suddenly  she  stopped 
and  shrieked. 

"  Oh !  where's  the  lodger  ? ' '  she  cried.  ' '  Do  show 
me  the  lodger.  I  must  see  him.  I  've  never,  never 
seen  one  yet.  I  can't  go  away  without  that." 

"But  we  haven't  one  now — I  'm  sorry,"  said 
Clo,  politely. 

Vera  flounced  into  Mark's  study,  a  little  room 
full  of  pigeon-holes  and  rolls  of  paper,  with  a 
common  lamp  on  a  deal  table. 


Saints  in  Society  173 

"Well,  show  me  where  he  was  then,"  she  said. 

''Was  he  in  here?     Dear,  dear,  what  a  funny  little 

mousetrap.     Did  he  really  live  in  here?     Really? 

Is   he   dead  ?     He    could  n't    survive   this,    you 

know." 

"No,"  said  Clo,  "she — it  was  a  'she' — is  not 
dead.  You  have  just  seen  her:  my  friend  up- 
stairs, Mrs.  Deane,  was  our  lodger." 

"That  sweet  person?  Is  that  what  they  look 
like.  But  how  very  nice.  After  all,  slumming 
and  all  that  seems  quite  romantic,"  she  added 
meditatively.  "Your  husband  is  a  great  friend 
of  mine."  Then  again,  in  the  shriek,  "When  are 
you  coming  to  see  me,  you  wonderful  serious  little 
person?  I  want  to  hear  about  your  doings.  It 
is  so  interesting.  I  often  see  your  husband;  he 
is  very  clever  and  most  gloriously  handsome. 
Where  did  you  pick  him  up?  You  might  have 
left  him  for  me.  Come  along,  Basil,"  she  added. 

Stillingfleet,  thus  addressed,  got  into  the  motor 
with  her,  after  giving  his  hand  to  Clo.  There  was 
more  than  a  sheepishness  about  him  to-day, 
though  it  was  new  to  Clo,  who  often  saw  him 
when  he  came  to  see  her  husband.  Hitherto  re- 
garding him  with  awe  as  the  immaculate  repre- 
sentative of  the  almost  godlike  Lord  Henry  Vade, 


174  Saints  in  Society 

to-day  she  seemed  to  feel  a  sense  of  contempt  for 
him,  she  could  not  have  told  why.  And  he  looked 
as  though  he  deserved  it.  She  stood  at  her  little 
door  and  watched  them. 

When  a  minute  after,  as  they  were  adjusting 
the  white  rugs,  she  heard  him  answer  Vera  as 
"dearest,"  she  thought  she  knew  why.  They 
spun  away,  looking  happy  and  handsome,  waving, 
laughing,  glittering  in  the  dull,  squalid  street  like 
beings  from  a  fairy  sphere.  But  for  the  watching 
girl  some  of  the  glamour  had  gone. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  long,  late  hours  at  the  House,  especially 
during  the  debating  over  his  Bill,  had  made 
it  a  necessity  that  Mark  should  have  a  club  some- 
where in  its  precincts,  and  after  some  delibera- 
tion he  had  found  a  suitable  one  to  which  he  was 
easily  elected. 

His  keen  absorption  in  his  affairs  kept  him 
more  and  more  at  this  place,  or  rather  between 
this  place  and  the  House,  and  Clo's  loneliness 
became  an  absolute  burden. 

At  this  time  Lady  Listower,  hearing  of  Vera's 
visit,  had  herself  driven  over  and  fetched  the  girl 
to  spend  an  hour  or  so  with  her,  feeling  that  her 
son  would  thus  be  won  to  gratitude ;  also  a  little 
conscious  that  he  had  taken  Mark  up  so  com- 
pletely that  wives  under  such  circumstances 
could  have  no  chance ;  and  last  but  not  least  being 
kindly  disposed  towards  Clo  herself. 

She  was  very  gentle  with  her,  recognising  her 
as  something  to  be  rather  pitied.  And  she  was 


Saints  in  Society 

interested  at  once  in  the  poor  girl's  attempt  at  a 
little  philanthropy  of  her  own.  She  promised  to 
help  her  with  her  collection  of  warm  clothing  for 
her  poor  children,  and  gave  her  kind  hints  of  how 
to  set  about  doing  so  herself. 

She  lent  her  books  and  encouraged  her  to  read 
and  to  talk  of  what  she  had  read;  and  told  her 
little  things  about  the  great  world,  about  customs, 
manners,  and  ways,  all  of  which  her  pupil  drank  in 
eagerly.  They  were  more  interesting  things  than 
poor  Fortescue's  bits  of  bygone  information,  and 
the  listener  took  them  all  in  with  a  surprising 
quickness.  Her  ladyship  had  been  the  first  to 
really  discover  Clo's  good  looks,  and  she  now  en- 
couraged the  girl  in  her  off-hand,  rattling  fashion 
to  pay  a  more  sensible  attention  to  these  herself. 
She  criticised  her  simple  dress  and  enlightened 
her  into  theories  as  to  hair-dressing.  The  gentle- 
ness of  the  pupil,  her  real  gratitude,  her  quaint 
and  graceful  reticence,  were  all  in  her  favour,  in 
addition  to  her  fine  and  handsome  presence;  and 
Lady  Listower  grew  interested  on  her  own  ac- 
count in  this  very  apt  and  affectionate  pupil,  who 
blushed  so  prettily  at  favours  and  who  regarded 
the  great  world  of  fashion  with  such  exquisite 
awe. 


Saints  in  Society  177 

So  after  this  it  became  a  custom  for  Clo  to  visit 
Lady  Listower  and  spend  some  time  with  her 
once  a  week,  reading  to  her  occasionally  (she  read 
clearly  and  well),  or  more  often  listening  to  her 
with  wide  sparkling  green  eyes. 

Like  all  Cockneys  the  girl  was  a  born  imitator, 
keen  of  observation,  sharp  at  self-defence,  and 
wonderfully  agile  at  adaptive  intelligence,  and 
she  was  wonderfully  apt  in  picking  up  the  ways 
and  tones  of  this  new  world  of  which  she  now  got 
such  charming  glimpses.  An  innate  sense  of  re- 
finement, perhaps  born  of  her  long  association 
with  good  if  humble  people,  taught  her  strangely  to 
reject  the  evils  that  nourished  in  that  Park  Lane 
paradise  and  only  to  imitate  the  graces.  Conse- 
quently there  was  no  echo  of  Vera's  impertin- 
ences and  cynicisms,  or  my  lady's  temper  and 
scandal  in  the  little  tags  she  picked  up — only  the 
daughter's  ease  and  daintiness,  and  the  mother's 
chivalry  and  consideration  of  others  seemed  to 
strike  her  low-born  mind  as  worth  copying.  This 
was  possibly  quite  vulgar  of  her.  But  it  was  a 
blessing  to  herself  and  to  her  husband. 

Lady  Listower,  considering  the  drive  to  Wai- 
worth  "impossible,"  gave  it  as  her  opinion  that 
Hading  ought  not  to  live  there.  She  suggested  a 

xa 


178  Saints  in  Society 

flat  in  Westminster  as  a  more  reasonable  abode 
for  a  member.  She  spoke  to  Henry  about  it  her- 
self one  night  after  the  opera,  and  said  she  could 
do  much  more  for  the  girl — she  said  "that  poor 
dear  thing" — if  she  did  not  live  in  quite  the  wilds 
of  nowhere.  She  said  this  pathetically,  with  a 
gaudy  pink  topaz  and  diamond  tiara  glinting 
gaily  a  little  too  far  back  on  her  head,  and  occa- 
sionally levelling  her  glasses  belligerently  at  other 
ladies  crowned  with  similar  things,  varying  from 
priceless  jewels  like  her  own  to  tinsel  and  beetles' 
wings.  It  was  a  "royal"  night  and  she  had  been 
feeling  very  keenly  the  loss  of  her  youth  in  the 
sense,  real  or  fancied,  that  she  was  not  so  much 
noticed — she  called  it  "seen" — as  of  yore.  She 
felt  a  little  cold,  and  a  little  old,  and  rather  tired. 
Believing  that  her  charm  had  gone,  she  thought, 
woman-like,  she  would  now  be ' '  good . "  A  woman 
once  said,  "It  's  so  tiresome  to  be  good — there  's 
time  enough  for  that  when  I  begin  to  grow  ugly." 
Possibly  more  than  one  woman  has  said,  or 
thought,  that  more  than  once.  In  any  case,  bad 
or  good  morality,  it  prompted  now  the  charitable 
thought,  the  benevolent  idea.  And  Henry  caught 
at  it,  making  ready  and  varied  suggestions  for  the 
project  and  feeling  confident  that  if  it  could  be 


Saints  in  Society  179 

managed  he  could  do  far  more  for  Hading  in 
other  plans  he  was  forming  for  him. 

So  eager  was  he  that  when  the  opera  was  over 
and  he  was  standing  with  his  mother  in  the  lobby 
waiting  for  her  brougham,  he  suddenly  caught  her 
bright  dark  eyes  on  his  face,  re-lighted  up  with 
affection,  and  said : 

"How  jolly  young  you  are  looking  to-night, 
mamma." 

And  Lady  Listower  forgot  she  had  not  been 
"seen,"  bridled  her  neck,  lost  the  creases  under 
her  eyes,  and  smiled  sighingly,  so  that  even  the 
hard  electric  light  and  the  pink  jewels  did  not  un- 
become  her.  There  is,  the  French  say,  a  beauty 
of  the  soul:  this  was  the  beauty  of  the  heart. 
And  strangely  it  irradiated. 

Hading,  when  tackled  about  it  the  next  day, 
liked  the  idea,  but  doubted  its  effect  on  his  sup- 
porters at  so  early  a  date. 

They  need  n't  know,"  said  Lord  Henry.  "You 
must  keep  on  the  house  at  Walworth  and  receive 
deputations  there — in  fact,  use  it  for  business. 
Mrs.  Hading  should  go  there  pretty  often  to  be 
seen  about  the  place.  She  does  n't  go  about 
much,  you  say,  so  who  's  to  know  whether  she 
lives  there  altogether  or  not?" 


i8o  Saints  in  Society 

"Very  well,"  said  Hading,  "that  might  be 
managed.  My  wife  does  charitable  work  there 
on  a  small  scale — to  amuse  herself,"  he  added 
thoughtfully.  "She  would  often  need  to  be 
there.  As  you  say,  they  hardly  need  know.  It 
need  not  make  much  disturbance.  I  should  be 
glad  of  quarters  nearer  here,  especially  now  that 
I  want  a  quiet  hole  to  write  in:  the  club  is  not 
private  enough,  and  I  waste  endless  time  going  to 
and  fro  to  Walworth,  and  even  when  there  the 
noises  of  the  street  make  writing  impossible." 

Without  much  delay  a  flat  was  found  in  West- 
minster, to  which  very  few  of  the  household  gods 
were  brought,  but  which  was  cheaply  but  effect- 
ively furnished  for  their  use.  And  Clo  came  to 
it,  pleased  in  a  sense  with  a  new  home — as  what 
young  wife  would  not  be? — but  vaguely  ill  at  ease 
about  leaving  the  few  old  friends  and  the  familiar 
place  where  their  good  fortunes  had  begun. 

Mark  laughed  at  her  and  pinched  her  ear  and 
called  her  "sentimental."  At  which  she  laughed 
too,  but  asked,  even  before  her  laugh  died  down, 
if  she  might  not  still  go  on  with  her  work  for  the 
children  and  use  the  upper  floor  as  a  meeting- 
place  for  them  when  Dorcas  Deane  held  classes 
or  gave  little  treats  to  them. 


Saints  in  Society  181 

"Ah,  of  course,"  said  Mark,  "you  can  do  as 
you  like  about  that.  But  don't  let  them  know — 
the  people,  I  mean — that  we  no  longer  live  there ; 
say  nothing  at  all  about  it.  Let  them  think  we 
are  still  in  the  place — it 's  better  for  a  time  at  any 
rate." 

"Why?"  said  Clo,  astonished. 

"Don't  you  see,  dear?"  he  answered.  "I  can 
live  where  I  like,  of  course,  but  it  would  shake 
their  confidence  in  me — my  people  there,  I  mean, 
my  constituents — if  they  thought  I  had  left  them 
now  that  success  is  crowning  my  efforts  at  last. 
Of  course  I  have  n't — I  'm  working  myself  to 
death  for  them  night  and  day,  as  you  know.  Look 
at  all  this  stuff  I  'm  writing  for  the  Daily  Mercury 
on  their  behalf:  I  have  n't  had  a  night's  rest 
for  ever  so  long — all  for  them.  Last  night  the 
House  did  n't  rise  till  two  o'clock,  and  yet  I  'm 
cramming  in  all  this  literary  work  too.  I  don't 
know  how  to  do  it.  It  's  killing  work." 

"Then  why  not  tell  them  that,  Mark,"  she  per- 
sisted. "They  would  see  how  noble  you  are — 
they  would  understand.  They  'd  admire  you." 

"No,  they  wouldn't,"  he  answered  a  little 
shortly;  "they're  very  stupid  about  some 
things." 


1 82  Saints  in  Society 

"  But  it  's  the  truth—"  began  Clo. 

"Now,  my  dear,  don't  be  silly,"  he  said  again 
a  little  tartly ;  "  there  are  matters  you  can't,  as 
a  woman,  be  expected  to  understand.  Just  say 
nothing  about  your  new  home.  There  's  no  need. 
They  '11  find  it  out  soon  enough." 

He  said  the  last  words  half  to  himself.  Clo 
felt  puzzled,  and  looked  so,  knitting  her  pretty 
marked  brows  and  looking  wistfully  out  of  the 
window  over  the  roofs  and  chimneys  to  where  the 
trees  of  the  Green  Park  showed  blue  and  faint  in 
the  wet  winter  haze,  and  the  distant  bulk  of 
Buckingham  Palace  loomed  like  a  gigantic  mon- 
ster in  a  sea  of  French  grey. 

He  saw  her  mood,  and  during  the  evening, 
when  he  ran  in  for  a  hurried  dinner  between  two 
deadly  debates,  he  gave  her  a  cheque  of  a  size 
startling  to  one  so  unused  to  cheques,  and  told 
her  to  go  to-morrow  and  buy  herself  some  pretty 
frocks.  In  the  old  days — the  days  of  the  "ten 
three"  pearl  necklace — she  would  have  been 
ecstatic  at  such  a  gift.  Now,  though  she  thanked 
him  smilingly  enough,  her  voice  was  rather 
breathless  and  she  looked  doubtful  and  a  little 
bewildered.  Man-like  he  deemed  the  bewilder- 
ment to  be  called  forth  at  the  size  of  the  cheque. 


Saints  in  Society  183 

"It's  all  right,"  he  said,  "I  can  spare  it.  I 
don't  do  all  that  hard  work  for  nothing.  We 
shall  be  rich  one  day,  Flower.  You  trot  out,  like 
a  good  girl,  and  buy  yourself  some  dresses.  Get 
some  evening  things — what  do  you  call  them? — 
like  Lady  Veronica  wears  at  night.  You  ought 
to  dress  for  dinner  now.  That  thing  you  Ve  got 
on  is  only  fit  for  mornings." 

"Oh!  Mark,"  she  said,  " like  Lady  Vera ?  Like 
that  dress  she  came  in  to  the  lecture?  Not  so 
grand  as  that,  surely?" 

"Well,  no,"  he  said;  "besides,  that  isn't  your 
style — you  're  too  fair  for  orange.  But  some- 
thing black  and  glittering  like  a  scaly  snake — she 
had  one  like  that  on  last  Tuesday.  It  would  suit 
you.  It  was  splendid." 

"Did  you  see  her  last  Tuesday?"  asked  Clo. 
"Where?" 

He  dropped  his  eyes  and  moved  his  head  care- 
lessly. "Oh!  I  dined  there,"  he  said;  "did  n't 
I  mention  it,  dear?" 

"  No,"  she  answered  unsuspiciously.  Of  course 
he  dined  with  these  great  people.  He  was  so 
great  himself.  She  must  expect  that. 

"Lady  Vera's  a  great  friend  of  yours,  Mark, 
isn't  she?" 


1 84  Saints  in  Society 

He  glanced  up  sharply.  "Yes,  she  is  very  kind," 
he  answered  rather  oddly.  "  That  is — she  under- 
stands me.  She  is  well  up  in  all  the  ins  and  outs 
of  political  life.  Why  do  you  ask?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  said  Clo.  "I  think  be- 
cause she  once  told  me  she  was.  She  meant  to 
be  kind  and  polite,  I  think." 

Later  on  she  asked :  "  May  I  tell  Dorcas  Deane? 
— about  our  removal,  I  mean.  She  must  know 
already,  I  should  think,  but  I  did  n't  see  her  to 
actually  say  '  Good-bye. '  I  told  her  I  should  be 
away  for  a  night  or  two." 

"Oh!  you  can  tell  her,"  he  said,  "she  won't 
repeat  it  or  make  mischief.  She  's  a  good  soul." 

The  touch  of  patronage  in  his  tone  jarred  a 
little.  Her  large  grave  eyes  looked  at  him 
steadily. 

"  I  never  met  her  equal,"  she  said. 

Next  day  she  went  over  to  Walworth  and  told 
Dorcas  about  their  affairs.  Dorcas  said  little, 
but  her  gentle  face  was  graver  for  a  while  after, 
but  she  wished  her  friend  every  happiness  in  her 
new  home  and  spoke  gently  of  the  greater  respon- 
sibility of  greater  powers.  Then  they  entered  so 
deeply  into  their  plans  for  their  beloved  children 
that  they  forgot,  both  of  them,  the  unpleasant 


Saints  in  Society  185 

impression,  vague,  indefinite,  that  floated  about 
Mark's  request  for  silence  as  to  his  movements. 
They  both  loved  him  too  well  not  to  feel  an  in- 
ward chill  at  his  action ;  yet  also  too  well  to  dis- 
cuss the  matter  even  in  their  secret  hearts. 

Clo  had  an  idea  of  carrying  on  a  little  club  in 
the  half-empty  house  on  somewhat  the  lines  of 
Mark's  sensational  Bill:  Mark  had  inspired  her 
originally,  and  now  the  idea  seemed  capable  of 
development.  It  was  to  be  for  quite  young  child- 
ren, and  was  to  train  them  in  religion,  manners, 
morals,  and  the  laws  of  health.  Dorcas  was  de- 
lighted. Her  sweet  hazel  eyes  were  beaming. 
Here  was  just  the  work  she  loved.  She  could  give 
a  large  part  of  her  evenings  to  such  a  scheme,  and 
superintend  it  without  neglecting  her  other  work, 
while  Clo  would  come  to  and  fro  from  Westmin- 
ster and  work  it  at  her  will.  There  were  already 
dozens  of  little  ones  only  too  ready  for  such  as- 
sistance. They  were  busy  for  an  hour  drawing 
up  rules  and  lists  of  possible  membership  drawn 
from  the  mass  of  their  ragged  little  friends. 

Then  Dorcas  got  up  and  put  on  her  grey  cloak. 
She  must  go  to  her  district  work — time  was  up. 

Clo  wended  her  way  homewards  full  of  plans 
and  cheerful  hopes,  smiling  to  herself  as  she 


1 86  Saints  in  Society 

walked  across  Westminster  Bridge  and  looked  at 
the  great  stretching  stone-city  of  St.  Stephen's, 
and  reflecting  that  Mark  was  in  there  doing  his 
great  work.  She  looked  wonderfully  different, 
even  now,  from  the  girl  of  old  days.  The  better 
air  of  her  new  home,  combined  with  the  excite- 
ment of  fresh  outlooks,  new  interests,  and  the  zest 
of  the  whole  thing,  had  given  her  good  looks  a  life 
and  verve  they  had  painfully  lacked  in  the  old 
sulky  days  of  nothing  to  do  and  nothing  to  think 
of  save  self. 

Her  skin  looked  clearer  and  her  daily  walks  part 
of  the  way  to  Walworth  now  began  to  give  her  a 
faint  rose  flush  and  brighten  her  green  eyes.  Her 
features,  once  puffy  and  rather  stupid-looking, 
had  developed  a  clearer,  sharper  formation  by 
that  most  mysterious  of  processes — the  working 
of  higher  thoughts.  They  now  looked  short,  neat, 
clearly-cut  little  features,  and  the  thick  under-lip 
was  no  longer  sulky  but  only  wore  that  charm  of 
hauteur  so  adorable  in  the  Princesses  of  the 
Austrian  Royal  family,  the  celebrated  lip  that 
Napoleon  worshipped  in  his  second  wife,  the 
Austrian  blonde,  and  which  all  the  world  raved 
about  in  Elizabeth,  the  murdered  Empress, 
rightly  surnamed  "Juno." 


Saints  in  Society  187 

One  of  those  fine  days  Lady  Listower  had  sent 
her  maid  round  to  the  Westminster  flat  and  told 
Clo  to  let  her  be  of  use  to  her  in  choosing  some 
dresses.  And  the  woman's  good  sense  had  taught 
her  to  advise  the  plainest  of  garments  for  the  most 
part,  though  in  good  materials  and  faultless  cut, 
and  Clo's  fine  figure,  now  a  little  fuller  than  of  yore, 
was  tall  and  straight  as  that  of  a  slender  goddess 
in  the  graceful  set  of  these  garments.  She  be- 
came a  distinctly  pretty  woman  of  a  very  un- 
common type,  and  began  to  attract  marked 
admiration. 

Thus  gradually  these  two  slum  people  began  to 
rise  inch  by  inch.  The  air  at  great  heights,  as  is 
well  known,  is  light.  You  must  keep  a  watch 
upon  your  head,  lest  it  too  get  light  and  dancing. 
And  as  heights  are  mainly  a  matter  of  comparison 
you  cannot  begin  your  watching  too  early. 


CHAPTER  XII 

I  ADY  VERA  and  Mark  were  certainly  great 
*-*  friends,  as  he  had  admitted.  It  is  not  clear 
what  a  woman  of  her  temperament  saw  in  such  a 
man  as  Mark  Hading,  except  that  the  conquering 
of  such  an  undoubted  and  arrogant  power  brought 
to  her  mean  little  mind  some  vague  sense  of 
gratified  vanity.  Mark  had  never  looked  at  a 
woman  of  her  sort  besides  herself,  and  was  the 
last  man  to  do  so.  He  was  rapidly  growing 
famous,  but  in  the  particular  respect  of  women 
was  apparently  invulnerable.  His  speeches,  his 
writings,  his  handsome  person,  combined  with 
such  absolute  remoteness,  made  the  subduing  of 
him  by  herself  a  great  triumph  to  this  lady.  She 
had  always  imagined  herself  to  possess  brains. 
Not  the  common  ordinary  brains  that  make 
women  successfully  conduct  households,  bring  up 
fine  manly  sons,  paint  pictures,  write  books,  or  do 
anything  so  rudely  obvious  and  definite,  but  those 

wonderful  elusive  brains  that  make  you  mysteri- 

188 


Saints  in  Society  189 

ously  misunderstood  by  your  more  vulgar  ac- 
quaintances and  have  the  wonderful  effect  of 
exonerating  you  completely  from  all  duty — 
parental,  filial,  wifely,  or  social.  Vera  thought  she 
could  have  ruled  courts,  have  shone  in  political 
intrigue,  have  swayed  ministers,  have  been  an 
eighteenth-century  prtcieuse.  She  did  not  for 
one  moment  believe  that  her  power  was  at  fault 
because  no  particular  court  as  yet  acknowledged 
this  subtle,  airy  swr.y:  she  was  only  pettishly 
conscious  that  the  background  was  unexplainably 
wanting.  Backgrounds  have  a  horrible  way  of 
being  wanted  at  the  right  moment.  No  one  but 
a  poseur  can  tell  the  agony  of  finding  those 
wretched  scenes  that  ought  to  have  supported 
one  sliding,  gliding,  moving  rapidly  away,  leaving 
only  bare  boards  and  no  proper  footlights.  Those 
witty  cardinals,  those  gallant  kings,  those  in- 
triguing courts  that  Vera  felt  that  she  could  have 
had  at  her  feet  whilst  she  swam  about  in  glorious 
brocades  and  said  smart  things — how  tiresome 
that  they  did  not  seem  to  be  forthcoming.  So 
she  said  she  was  misunderstood,  quoted  the  most 
fatalist  bits  from  Omar  Khayyam  wrongly,  criti- 
cised all  her  friends,  came  down  late  to  breakfast, 
and  was  rude,  very  rude,  to  her  mother. 


1 90  Saints  in  Society 

Genius  will  often  manifest  itself  in  these  little 
ways.  The  artistic  or  the  spirituelle  tempera- 
ment is  wonderfully  subtle,  especially  the  kind 
that  never  produces  anything  vulgar  enough  to 
get  into  print  or  to  go  to  Eton.  It  marks  priceless 
editions  with  impudent  little  comments  out  of  its 
own  poor  store  of  stock  epigrams  and  passes  for 
"brilliant"  with  its  friends.  Much  more  brilliant 
than  the  Philistine  clod  who  wrote  the  books  for 
it  to  scintillate  about,  of  course.  So  Vera,  who 
had  friends  who  were  merely  beautiful,  or  merely 
clever,  set  her  wide-apart  almond  eyes  in  slightly- 
caricatured  pose  of  pensiveness  and  said  cutting 
and  sarcastic  things  about  them  in  a  sweet,  thin 
voice  that  proved  her  to  be  infinitely  their 
superior.  It  was  the  finer  spirit  of  a  finer  ether 
lightly  touching  on  the  coarser,  commoner  clay 
that  satisfied  a  vulgar  and  stupid  world.  Some 
of  those  pretty  women  had  a  horrible  way  of  satis- 
fying that  vulgar  and  stupid  world — a  rather  per- 
sistent way  in  spite  of  Vera's  strictures.  It  must 
not  be  understood  from  this  that  Vera  herself  was 
not  pretty.  In  a  hard,  metallic  way  she  certainly 
was,  and  most  men  who  met  her  really  believed 
in  her  hair,  which  showed  that  she  was.  But 
having  early  in  her  career  discovered  that  blatant 


Saints  in  Society  191 

selfishness,  rudeness,  and  greed  put  a  certain  limit 
even  to  the  power  of  beauty,  she  had  explained 
to  herself  the  fact  that  she  did  not  entirely  rule 
the  world  by  rinding  that  the  world  was  too  vulgar 
to  appreciate  her  rule.  From  this  her  conscious- 
ness of  genius  grew.  In  place  of  the  Chateau- 
briands,  the  Louis  the  Fifteenths,  the  Mazarins, 
the  George  the  Fourths,  the  Napoleons  that  she 
felt  she  could  have  swayed  by  a  jerky  wave  of  her 
scraggy  little  ringer  in  a  more  effective  age,  she 
found  a  materialistic,  obstinate,  married  Labour 
member  with  rather  bad  manners  for  her  cause 
of  triumph.  But  he  took  more  than  a  little 
ringer  to  fascinate.  You  had  to  work  very  hard. 
You  had  to  be  frightfully  sympathetic  and  very 
touchingly  womanly,  and  that  was  really  hard 
work  sometimes.  Still,  he  was  worth  it.  Where- 
ever  he  went  he  became  violently  the  central 
figure,  and  that  glory  you  naturally  shared.  And 
he  might  become  rich,  and  more  powerful  still. 
Vera  adored  every  sort  of  luxury.  She  must  and 
would  have  it.  She  had  a  very  good  allowance 
from  her  father — to  some  it  would  have  seemed 
like  a  fortune  in  itself — but  it  was  never  half 
enough  for  her  myriad  wants.  The  presents  of 
a  man  like  Mark  would  be  infinitely  useful.  Vera 


192  Saints  in  Society 

invariably    regarded    such    "friends"    from   the 
point  of  view  of  presents. 

Besides,  time  had  gone  on  somewhat  fast  and 
people  had  a  way  of  overtaking  one,  such  as 
debutantes  and  new  people.  Vera  always  called 
these  "raw,"  implying  that  she  herself  was 
supremely  cooked — as,  in  a  sense  that  chartered 
accountants  use  the  word,  she  was.  Of  course, 
during  the  years  she  had  been  out  she  had  had 
"offers,"  but  so  many  of  them  were  insignificant. 
One  had  developed  into  an  actual  engagement — 
he  was  a  fine  young  officer,  the  heir  to  a  baronetcy 
— but  Vera  had  begun  her  delicate,  brilliant 
counter  intriguing  with  other  men  a  little  too 
soon  in  the  history  of  this  romance,  even  before 
the  wedding  dress  was  ordered,  and  the  young 
soldier,  after  finding  her  out  in  an  elaborate 
scheme  concerning  the  clandestine  meeting  of 
two  other  men  respectively,  one  of  terrible  char- 
acter, a  scheme  involving  the  telling  of  three 
separate  lies  to  himself,  promptly  quarrelled  with 
her  and  the  match  was  broken  off.  Her  ambition 
to  become  a  smart,  flirting  married  woman,  a 
queen  of  fascination,  overcame  her  discretion  as 
to  the  proper  time  to  begin  these  operations. 
She  lost  the  budding  baronet,  who  was  rich  and 


Saints  in  Society  193 

honourable.  Later  on  he  married  a  pretty  girl 
of  her  own  set,  whom  Vera  designated  as  "  middle 
class"  because  she  never  disgraced  him.  From 
this  time  onward  her  own  career  had  been  a  series 
of  flirtations  leading  to  nowhere  but  a  greed  for 
more. 

She  is  not  interesting,  except  as  a  type  of  the 
kind  of  siren  men  will  take  quite  seriously.  You 
can  never  judge  a  man's  intellectual  capacity  by 
the  kind  of  woman  he  takes  seriously.  Noble 
beings  of  the  greatest  acumen  and  cleverness  in 
other  walks  will  look  upon  such  bolstered,  shallow, 
paltry  charms  as  Vera's  with  reverential  awe.  A 
man  who  will  never  make  a  single  mistake  in  the 
reading  up  of  a  business  opponent,  a  man  friend, 
a  servant,  or  an  ugly  woman,  will  most  amazingly 
take  these  rickety  graces  on  trust,  the  whole 
gamut  of  them.  Very  often  the  cleverer  and 
better  the  man  the  more  easily  does  the  gilded 
plaster  Venus  impose  upon  his  credulity. 

Mark  had  found  the  new  world  to  which  he  was 
admitted  a  great  contrast  to  what  he  had  sup- 
posed in  the  Minden  Street  days.  He  had  had 
no  experience  of  women  of  the  upper  classes. 
Vera,  at  the  Islington  meeting,  had  been  the  first 
to  light  upon  his  path  at  anything  like  close 
13 


194  Saints  in  Society 

quarters.  Up  to  his  introduction  to  her  and  Lady 
Listower  he  had  always  regarded  the  feminine 
element  as  insignificant,  as  men  of  low  origin  in- 
variably do  so  regard  it, — something  to  get  the 
dinner,  to  soothe  the  sick,  to  bear  the  tempers, 
and,  if  you  grew  rich,  to  heap  expensive  clothes 
upon  (sealskin  jackets  and  diamond  earrings  by 
preference  and,  say,  a  "silk  gown")  that  the 
world  might  behold  the  evidences  of  your  wealth. 
As  a  good  man,  a  religious  man,  he  had,  of  course, 
been  kind  to  his  particular  woman  in  a  vague, 
large  way,  but  it  had  never  dawned  on  him  that 
she  had  even  the  makings  of  an  intellect,  owing, 
of  course,  to  her  sex,  and  naturally  as  a  being  so 
clearly  inferior  he  had  never  regarded  her  in- 
fluence as  worth  considering.  It  is  one  of  the 
oddest  of  facts  that  the  higher  you  go  in  civilisa- 
tion the  less  is  this  attitude  taken  by  men.  A 
parvenu  will  reveal  it  again  and  again,  and  with 
it  his  own  origin.  A  gentleman  never. 

Mark's  first  notion  that  a  different  order  of 
women  existed  to  the  ones  his  friends  had  been 
used  to  occasionally  patronise  as  "you  ladies"  in 
public,  and  quarrel  with  behind  the  scenes,  was 
got  from  Vera.  To  him,  therefore,  her  brains, 
her  wit,  her  sympathy,  her  influence  came  as  a 


Saints  in  Society  195 

revelation  of  an  entirely  new  type.  He  naturally 
took  it  quite  seriously.  He  had  no  means  of 
comparing  it  with  the  real  thing  and  so  judging 
of  its  falsity.  For  a  woman  to  quote  books  so 
lightly,  so  gaily  (and,  had  he  but  known  it,  so  in- 
correctly), to  speak  with  such  intelligence,  yet 
such  deference  to  his  own  opinion,  was  a  new  and 
fascinating  experience.  "  Fine  ladies,"  as  he  had 
been  wont  to  call  them,  should,  by  the  rights  of 
things,  be  empty-headed,  selfish,  frivolous.  But 
this  one  knew  more,  in  some  matters,  than  he  did, 
— had  he  but  known  it,  much  more.  Lady  Lis- 
tower,  too,  haughty  but  tactful,  interesting, 
clever,  could  converse  in  a  way  he  had  never 
imagined  any  woman  conversing.  They  were  an 
absolute  opening  up  of  a  new  world  to  him.  Be- 
side them  Clo,  infinitely  improved  as  she  had 
seemed  to  him  under  Fortescue's  instruction  and 
Dorcas's  loving  influence,  appeared  silent,  cold, 
stiff,  uninteresting. 

He  had  not  always  approved  of  his  too  worldly 
wife,  but  he  had  never  thought  her  common  before. 
Yet  now  she  began  to  seem  just  a  little  inferior. 
Much  as  she  had  changed  and  gained  in  dignity 
she  was  not  quite  what  these  great  ladies  were, 
and  he  doubted  whether  she  ever  could  be. 


196  Saints  in  Society 

Vera,  struck  at  once  by  his  face,  which  was,  as  are 
the  faces  of  all  hard,  earnest  workers,  strangely 
interesting,  had  reckoned  him  as  by  no  means 
beneath  the  range  of  her  bow  and  spear,  even  in 
those  early  days  of  his  comparative  obscurity. 
She  had  enjoyed  flitting  before  him  as  a  vision  of 
an  unattainable  beauty  and  brilliance,  as  she  put 
it  to  herself.  These  poor,  dear  "men  of  the 
people"  were  so  tremendously  in  earnest.  It  was 
all  so  exciting,  like  playing  with  edged  tools. 
Stillingfleet,  the  secretary,  with  whom  a  tender 
understanding  had  fizzled  along  weakly  for  more 
than  a  year,  was  "no  sport,"  as  Vera  inelegantly 
put  it,  to  this  dark-browed,  fiery-tongued,  de- 
cisive person  with  his  definite  beliefs  and  un- 
beliefs and  possible  fieriness  and  storminess  of 
character. 

Like  all  women,  Vera  misread  the  stern  con- 
centration of  an  absolutely  typical  business  face 
for  hidden  possibilities  of  passion.  Women  see 
that  look  of  set  purpose  and  concentration  on  a 
man's  face  and  say  to  themselves,  "  How  that  man 
would  love!"  Yet  the  very  concentration  that 
wraps  such  men  in  the  realities  of  the  large  lives 
they  have  set  themselves  is  the  surest  preventa- 
tive  of  anything  like  long  and  deep  dallying  in 


Saints  in  Society  197 

love.  You  cannot  have  Romeo  and  Isambard 
Brunei  rolled  into  one.  You  can  have  the  one  or 
the  other :  Dante  or  a  Cotton  King ;  Byron  or  the 
Duke  of  Wellington.  Great  lovers  are  not  made 
of  great  capitalists,  organisers,  or  soldiers.  Men 
who  do  anything  large  in  this  way  regard  their 
women  with  flippant  amiability,  but  never  life- 
long, red-hot  devotion.  Of  course  women  who 
are  really  worth  the  name  are  willing  to  accept 
this  and  even  to  prefer  it  to  poetic  dallyings, 
providing  the  man  is  great  enough,  and  they 
will  trot  willingly  after  him  and  receive  the 
occasional  patronage  and  be  happy  ever  after. 
But  the  average  woman  prefers  Romeo  because 
he  necessitates  her  own  sitting  on  a  balcony, 
an  endearing  trait  in  the  quality  of  his 
love. 

Vera  mistook  Mark's  dark  cavernous  eyes  for 
Romeo's  love-haunted  depths.  Really  they  were 
set  sternly  on  the  mere  desire  to  work,  and  rise 
through  work.  Turned  on  you  suddenly  in  a 
drawing-room  they  appeared  to  search  your  soul. 
If  you  were  egotistical  you  at  once  concluded  it 
was  your  soul  alone  in  all  the  world  that  they 
searched:  you  forgot  that  they  also  searched 
ledgers,  and  flattering  newspaper  cuttings,  and 


198  Saints  in  Society 

chances   of   advancement   in  .exactly   the   same 
manner. 

So  Vera  set  to  work  to  win  for  the  advance- 
ment of  her  own  vanity  the  supposed  glowing 
heart  of  this  most  interesting  man.  And  Mark, 
though  incapable  of  elaborate  devotion,  was 
slowly  but  surely  developing  a  large  capacity  for 
personal  vanity — the  most  insidious  kind  of  per- 
sonal vanity,  the  kind  that  prides  itself  on  its 
"power"  and  "force"  and  "magnetic  person- 
ality." A  much  worse  kind  than  the  mild  species 
that  breaks  out  in  spotted  socks  and  oddly-de- 
veloped waistcoats  and  centre  partings.  And 
Vera's  schemes  caught  that  vanity  through  aim- 
ing at  maudlin  emotion  only.  And  very  surely 
she  succeeded  in  her  wretched  endeavour.  She 
must  not  be  misunderstood.  She  was  not  cruel 
to  Chloris.  She  had  practically  forgotten  her. 
To  Vera  there  was  really  no  one  in  the  world  but 
Vera :  absolutely  she  could  not  see  anybody  else, 
except  dimly  as  through  a  fog,  and  then  only  on 
occasions.  She  was  not  erring  consciously  against 
the  great  moral  laws.  To  her  there  were  no 
moral  laws.  There  were  customs  in  the  big  play- 
ground made  for  Vera  to  amuse  herself,  called 
the  world,  but  they  only  remained  even  customs 


Saints  in  Society  199 

so  long  as  they  suited  Vera.  It  was  a  simple 
code,  and  quite  savage.  Long-continued  selfish- 
ness will  make  it  beautifully  attainable  by  every 
one. 

The  only  disadvantage  is  that  in  course  of 
time,  years  and  years  of  it,  it  really  begins  to 
make  you  look  savage;  it  gives  you  a  sharp  face 
like  a  rat,  and  cunning  rodent's  eyes,  and  a  nasty- 
looking  jaw,  which  are  not  becoming  decked  out 
with  the  insignia  and  appurtenances  of  beauty. 
Did  Darwin  get  his  earliest  inspiration  for  his 
famous  theory  from  some  hungry,  self -ridden, 
haggard  old  faded  charmer?  If  you  do  not 
come  from  apes  you  can  get  very  near  returning 
to  them. 

She  had  begun  by  sending  him  a  note,  a  little 
scrawly,  whirly  note,  asking  him  something  inno- 
cent about  the  meaning  of  one  of  his  public 
utterances.  He  was  flattered  and  replied  at  once. 
The  coronet  on  the  neat  paper,  combined  with 
the  innocence  of  stumbling  woman  asking  for 
guidance  from  superior  man,  was  piquant.  He 
replied  with  grave  kindness.  A  little  later  Vade 
asked  him  home  to  dinner,  Lady  Listower  most 
amiably  permitting — this  being  the  only  means 
of  getting  her  son  to  come  and  see  her  on  that 


200  Saints  in  Society 

particular  night.  There  and  then  Vera  was  very 
enchanting.  A  man  of  her  own  world  might  have 
recognised  several  of  the  tricks  she  used  as  a  little 
worn,  but  to  Mark  they  were  all  spontaneous 
graces.  She  begged  to  be  informed  about  the 
"suffering  millions." 

"Poor  things,  is  n't  it  sa — ad?"  she  said,  open- 
ing her  mouth  like  a  fish,  and  enlarging  her  eyes 
to  the  "pensive  point,"  while  her  head  went 
wonderfully  on  one  side.  She  was  sitting  in  a 
high-backed  Jacobean  chair  of  black  oak  in  the 
study  after  dinner  as  she  made  this  tender  ob- 
servation. She  wore  a  quaint  dress  of  trailing 
white  velvet,  and  orange  topazes.  Immediately 
she  had  uttered  the  remark,  which  required  quite 
five  seconds  of  pathetic  staring  into  space  to 
complete  it,  she  forgot  it  suddenly  and  began 
violently  arranging  and  spreading  the  folds  of 
her  dress  over  her  silver  slippers,  with  an  eye  to 
its  effect  against  the  black  oak.  Hundreds  of 
women  insist  on  "  preening"  in  front  of  spectators 
with  an  ostrich-like  blindness  to  the  fact  that 
other  people  see  and  recognise  that  gallant  art. 
But  no  one  is  so  blind  to  that  fact  as  the  quite 
self-satisfied  enchantress  who  composes  her  dress, 
touches  her  hair  here  and  there,  arranges  her 


Saints  in  Society  201 

jewellery  during  a  conversation  on  quite  other 
matters,  with  a  sublime  unconsciousness  that 
any  one  can  see  and  follow  the  pantomime. 

But  Mark  was  not  critical.  He  proceeded  to 
talk  about  the  "suffering  millions"  in  a  very 
fiery  fashion.  He  also  rather  wished  he  was  not 
wearing  a  morning  suit,  because  he  felt  so  in- 
sanely different  from  the  other  men.  Even  Pegram 
and  Bunny,  whom  he  regarded  with  supreme 
contempt,  looked  tidier,  somehow,  than  he  did. 
It  must  be  that  idiotic  dress.  He  had  called 
them  "fools"  and  "fops"  in  his  mind  when  he 
first  saw  them,  and  he  was  not  far  wrong.  But 
to-night,  in  the  wide,  beautiful  study,  they  had 
the  advantage  of  him.  It  had  not  been  so  bad 
at  the  carefully-shaded  dinner-table,  but  here,  on 
the  polished  floor  of  the  stately  apartment,  he 
became  aware  of  his  boots  to  an  extent  that  was 
quite  crushing. 

He  reflected  that  prophets — great  prophets — 
were  always  crucified  more  or  less.  He  also 
remembered  a  moment  later  this  was  not  for  their 
boots.  So  he  gladly  plunged  into  conversation 
with  Vera,  who  did  not  seem  to  be  aware  of  his 
slight  self-consciousness,  and  warming  up  to  his 
subject,  became  his  own  eloquent  self,  the  plat- 


202  Saints  in  Society 

form  self,  in  a  very  short  time.  She  asked  him 
to  lend  her  a  book  on  those  dear,  dear  creatures 
— would  he?  Of  course  he  would.  Should  he  send 
it?  Yes — or — oh,  if  he  would  call  in  with  it  some 
time  when  he  had  a  moment's  freedom.  She  had 
never  heard  anything  so  interesting.  How  won- 
derful he  was.  How  heroic!  "Ah,  dear  Mr. 
Hading,  we  are  none  of  us  serious  enough;  but 
you — you  could  make  us  think." 

Mark  smiled  consciously.  He  hoped  to — he 
would  try. 

"When  I  think  of  all  those  poor  creatures,  Mr. 
Hading,  I  feel  so  unworthy."  Again  that  gasp 
and  stare. 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Mark,  his  eyes  appraising  the 
fine  old  jewels  on  her  slender  neck,  and  thinking 
to  himself  that  after  all  Dorcas  Deane  was  not  the 
only  saintly  woman  of  his  acquaintance.  Here 
was  one  quite  as  good  without  poor  Dorcas's 
ugly  bonnet. 

"  May  I  not  do  something  to  help  them?  What 
could  I  do?  Is  n't  there  some  little  work  even  for 
a  frivolous  worldling  like  little  me?"  she  pleaded. 

A  man  is  deeply  infatuated  who  can  stand 
"little  me"  without  wincing:  it  makes  most 
decent  Englishmen  shudder  and  coil  up  into  the 


Saints  in  Society  203 

shell  for  a  time  at  least.  But  Mark  stood  it. 
What  a  sweet  girl!  How  touching  that  any  one 
so  rich  and  so  beautiful  should  want  to  help  the 
poor.  He  had  always  thought  the  women  of  the 
upper  classes  were  "proud  ladies,"  always  acting 
that  part,  haughty  and  unapproachable,  generally 
occupied  in  flaunting  in  chariots  and  over-dress- 
ing. Yet  here  was  one  humbler  than  Dorcas 
herself;  she  had  never  called  herself  a  little 
worldling  and  him  a  hero.  In  fact,  of  late,  she 
had  developed  a  distinct  tendency  to  call  him  the 
worldling.  But  this  woman  was  so  clever  and 
understanding,  and  yet  so  simple  and  childlike. 

"There  is  nothing  fit  for  you  to  do,"  he  said 
softly.  "  It  is  all  too  rough.  It  is  man's  work. 
A  rough  man's.  But  such  women  as  you  can 
cheer  us  on,  and  soothe  us  after  our  toil.  That 
is  your  work." 

"  Ah,  yes,  brush  away  the  cobwebs,"  said  Vera, 
sweetly,  lapsing  into  one  of  her  unfortunate 
similes,  cobwebs  being  patently  the  result  of 
complete  inaction.  But  they  were  both  much 
too  absorbed  to  notice  such  a  trifle.  That  is  the 
best  of  really  exalted  conversations.  You  soar 
above  similes,  bad  or  good.  It  is  a  blessing  that 
it  is  so  as  they  are  generally  shockingly  bad. 


204  Saints  in  Society 

So  these  two  struck  up  a  kind  of  platonic 
friendship  of  a  semi-pathetic  nature,  Mark  de- 
sperately flattered  and  the  lady  determined  to  be 
admired. 

That  night,  when  he  went  home  to  his  West- 
minster flat  in  his  jingling  hansom,  the  dainty 
vision  of  Vera  in  white  velvet  breathing  tender 
things  about  the  dear  poor  danced  continually 
before  his  eyes.  It  was  a  moonlight  night,  and  as 
he  came  out  into  the  big  square  from  Whitehall 
the  great  towers  of  St.  Stephen's  stood  up  sharply 
blue  against  the  nameless  silver  azure  of  the  night 
sky  and  filled  his  soul  with  a  sudden  sense  of 
power  and  greatness  to  come.  The  Abbey  looked 
black  in  the  mass  of  its  own  deep  shadows.  The 
statue  of  Beaconsfield  cast  a  sharp  black  line 
behind  it  on  the  cropped  grass,  which  showed  up 
green  and  quivering  and  etherealised  in  the  flood 
of  moonlight.  It  was  a  very  fine  world,  a  grand 
world — Si  world  that,  after  all,  acknowledged  you 
if  you  stuck  to  things  long  enough.  He  did  not 
define  quite  what  things  he  was  sticking  to.  But 
he  had  a  very  fine  cigar,  and  had  dined  well  with 
a  peer,  and  there  was  a  beautiful  woman  who 
truly  appreciated  him,  and  he  was  growing  more 
famous,  both  as  a  writer  and  speaker,  every  day. 


PART  II 

CHAPTER  XIII 

TWO  years  had  passed.away  since  the  Hadings' 
flitting    over    the    river,    years    politically 
eventful. 

The  Prime  Minister  was  giving  a  reception, 
quite  a  private  affair,  or  rather  as  private  as 
anything  prime  ministerial  could  hope  to  be. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  it  did  not  call  itself  political, 
neither  was  it:  those  gorgeous  days  of  the  old 
salon,  revived  again  by  Mr.  D' Israeli's  writings, 
only  to  die  out  again  in  an  age  of  restaurants  and 
rushing,  were  over  for  ever.  Prime  Ministers 
doff  their  skins  nowadays  at  parties  and  become 
ordinary  persons,  leopards  without  spots,  quite 
ordinary  beings  without  a  penchant  for  special 
breakfast  dishes  or  anything  unusual,  .say,  at  a 
house-party,  and  quite  without  the  least  wish  to 
contradict  everybody  at  a  dinner.  The  times 

change.     This  particular  one,  of  the  time  of  which 

205 


2o6  Saints  in  Society 

I  write,  was  a  burly  person  of  no  particular 
ability,  with  the  general  appearance  of  a  rather 
unhappy  'bus-driver:  only  he  was  not  horsey. 
He  was  really  nothing  very  striking,  save  that  he 
had  no  sense  of  humour,  if  that  is  striking,  and 
was  generally  in  a  condition  of  being  eternally 
aggrieved. 

His  house  was  palatial,  his  wife  a  fine  woman 
of  some  presence,  delightfully  indifferent  to  the 
claims  of  ambition,  being  chiefly  wrapped  up  in 
the  rearing  of  a  large  and  healthy  and  plain 
family,  and  comfortably  without  imagination, 
fear,  or  vanity.  This  good  lady,  dressed  like  a 
stage  duchess  in  a  glittering  robe  of  pink  and 
gold  trailing  four  yards  behind  her,  had  a  theory 
that  it  was  absolutely  immoral  to  do  aught  with 
your  hair  save  tug  it  back  by  the  roots  and  twist 
it  in  a  vicious  knot  behind.  Her  own  locks  being 
shiny  black  and  glossy  as  a  raven's  wing,  this 
style  did  not  so  greatly  unbecome  her  as  might 
have  been  the  case  had  she  been  fair;  and  her 
head  being  a  fine  shape,  and  her  marked  healthy 
features  serenely  good-humoured,  she  gave  a 
pleasant  and  rather  comely  impression:  only  her 
coiffure  added  ten  years  to  her  age. 

Somehow,  in  the  midst  of  her  marble  halls, 


Saints  in  Society  207 

whose  towering  white  pillars  rose  round  her  on 
every  side,  backed  by  banks  of  hydrangeas  and 
palm,  and  robed  in  that  clinging  dream  of  a 
southern  sunset  that  fitted  her  like  a  glove,  she 
still  managed  to  give  the  impression  that  she  had 
just  come  from  superintending  the  bathing  of  the 
children,  and  the  steam  and  the  soap  and  the 
jollity  still  shone  in  her  genial  blue  eyes.  Char- 
acter will  out.  She  had  n't  been  bathing  her 
children.  The  youngest  was  at  Eton,  and  they 
were  all  long  past  such  childish  ways,  but  still  her 
firm  handshake  suggested  a  visit  to  the  dentist, 
and  her  breezy  voice  a  call  at  the  chiropodist  and 
the  hairdresser;  and  when  she  bustled  her  guests 
about  in  her  vigorous  way  one  thought  of  copy- 
books and  milk  puddings. 

Her  guests  swarmed  up  the  staircase,  however, 
at  a  great  rate,  oblivious  of  these  wandering  in- 
fluences, and  crowding  into  the  marble  salon,  a 
mass  of  glitter  and  chatter  and  colour.  The 
Prime  Minister  himself  welcomed  them  all,  with 
something  of  the  air  of  the  Mock  Turtle  in  A  lice 
in  Wonderland,  it  is  true,  but  more  composed 
than  might  appear.  He  was  not  really  sad. 

Most  of  the  Listowers  were  there:  Henry 
flitting  about  like  a  dragon-fly;  Veronica  very 


208  Saints  in  Society 

brilliant  in  an  impossibly  simple  gown  of  white 
iridescent  gauze  and  floating  blue  scarves,  ar- 
ranged as  Emma  Hamilton  &  la  Diana,  which 
part  she  really  looked  until  you  actually  met  the 
hardness  of  her  eyes,  when  the  resemblance  be- 
came a  caricature. 

Lady  Listower  in  heliotrope,  with  a  trellis-work 
of  silver  chenille  all  over  her,  appeared  to  be  in  a 
cage,  which  her  expression  of  chronic  indignation 
seemed  to  justify,  as  of  some  wild  animal  in 
captivity.  Lord  Pegram,  her  son,  was  flirting 
with  an  American  heiress  who  was  snubbing  him 
incessantly  without  making  the  faintest  im- 
pression ;  and  Bunny  was  muttering  general  com- 
plaints of  things  generally  into  the  ear  of  a  very 
Titian-headed  but  rather  handsome  lady  with  im- 
mense sapphires  round  her  plump  neck,  whom 
the  world  called  Lady  Ulma  Prinz,  the  wife  of  a 
great  speculator  of  that  name.  She  was  replying 
with  unction  to  his  grumbles. 

"Yes,  is  n't  it?"  she  was  saying  in  a  slow,  fat 
voice,  "  sickening.  I  'm  sure  I  'm  miserable,  and 
Agnes  is  miserable,  and  Dobbin  's  miserable.  The 
whole  thing  's  beastly." 

"Well,  I  always  told  you  that 's  what  would 
happen,"  said  Bunny,  "didn't  I?" 


Saints  in  Society  209 

"Well, and  I  said  so,  too,"  she  answered;  "you 
know  I  did.  I  said  it  at  Goodwood,  and  I  say  it 
now,  and  I  shall  always  say  it.  I  'm  tired  of 
saying  it." 

"  It 's  a  most  off  world,"  replied  he.  "That 's 
just  my  opinion.  Everything  goes  to  pot. 
Where's  the  good?" 

His  companion  shrugged. 

"  Heaven  knows.  I  call  it  most  tiresome. 
First  there  's  one,  then  there  's  another  bothering 
at  you.  Things  bore  me  so  that  I  have  taken  to 
Turkish  baths.  One  must  do  something.  And 
there  is  n't  anything  to  do  either.  Do  you  know 
anything  to  do?" 

"  No,  only  bridge.  And  it  generally  does  you," 
he  replied  dejectedly. 

"Well,  I  shall  take  to  a  blue  veil,"  she  replied, 
"and  have  an  operation.  But  even  that  's  over- 
done. I  'm  sick  of  everything." 

They  stood  staring  vacantly  at  space,  side  by 
side,  the  big  woman  and  the  little  man,  with 
perhaps  the  blankest  expression  human  coun- 
tenances can  ever  be  supposed  to  attain.  And 
no  one  pitied  them.  Life  is  full  of  misunder- 
standings. 

Sir  Samuel  Crawshay  was  talking  to  a  Duke 


2io  Saints  in  Society 

whose  blue  order  little  became  his  sallow  com- 
plexion. Crawshay  himself  was  the  picture  of 
health  and  good  spirits,  having  in  a  year's  sport 
in  the  Highlands,  on  the  Continent,  and  round 
the  place  generally,  recovered  a  little  from  his 
cousins. 

"What  happened  to  Arthur?"  the  Duke  was 
saying.  Crawshay  laughed  shortly. 

"Spirit  rapping,"  he  answered  with  contempt, 
"and  tabloids.  Beeton  had  an  operation  on  his 
little  finger — or  his  shirt-stud,  I  'm  not  sure 
which.  It  got  into  the  papers,  though.  Claude 
now  eats  stuff  you  can  only  get  from  South 
America  in  tins,  and  writes  woolly  pamphlets  on 
anthropomorphic  men.  I  pray  this  Government 
keeps  in  long  enough  to  allow  them  to  die  of  their 
various  complaints  before  they  get  another 
chance  of  office." 

"I  think  you  are  doomed  to  disappointment," 
answered  the  sallow  Duke;  "these  people  are 
breaking  up  fast — breaking  up  fast.  Even  their 
own  household  turns  against  them — look  at  that 
Daily  Mercury  man.  See  how  he  has  veered 
round  since  Vade  put  him  on  that  hobby-horse. 
What  is  his  name?  Hade — Hading.  Did  you 
see  his  leader  this  morning?  I  don't  know  what 


Saints  in  Society  211 

we  are  coming  to.     What  is  a  Radical?     What 
is  a  Labour  leader?  There  are  no  landmarks  left." 

"  I  can't  make  that  fellow  out,"  said  Crawshay, 
thoughtfully;  "  I  don't  know  what  he  does  want. 
He  does  n't  either,  1 11  be  bound.  But  he  's 
jolly  clever.  Have  you  seen  his  wife?  She  's 
lovely." 

At  this  moment  the  pair  they  spoke  of  entered 
the  room.  There  was  quite  a  hush  at  their  en- 
trance, but  they  walked  in  quietly  enough,  Had- 
ing even  with  a  knitted  brow  and  an  air  of 
abstraction. 

Chloris  was  in  a  pure  silver  gown  like  a  sheath. 
It  clung  closely  to  the  figure  and  fell  away  at  the 
train  in  a  great  sweep  along  the  floor :  it  was  not 
the  glitter  of  sequins  but  solid  cloth  of  silver. 
She  had  a  girdle  of  fine  pearls  and  green  embroid- 
ery with  stole  ends  falling  down  the  front.  Her 
honey-coloured  hair  was  dressed  simply  in  a  long 
coil  roped  right  down  the  back  of  her  neck,  and 
a  tiny  pearl  and  silver  tiara  showed  right  in 
the  front.  Her  resemblance  to  the  late  Empress 
of  Austria,  first  openly  discovered  by  Lady  Lis- 
tower,  was  now  remarkable;  save  that  she  was 
fair  and  Elizabeth  dark,  her  features,  brows, 
and  carriage  of  the  head  were  identical. 


212  Saints  in  Society 

Her  beauty  was  patent  to  all.  Crawshay  went 
forward  at  once,  and  soon  quite  a  crowd  sur- 
rounded her.  She  was  superb  to  look  at,  though, 
as  of  old,  she  had  little  or  nothing  to  say.  Her 
husband  finding  his  own  level  as  quickly  as  she, 
they  were  soon  separated.  The  sallow  Duke 
urged  forward  for  an  introduction,  but  it  was 
Lord  Listower  who  took  her  away  for  refresh- 
ment, feeling  in  some  dim  way  a  right  to  her 
society  on  the  strength  of  his  having  been  Am- 
bassador in  the  old  days  in  the  country  of  her 
prototype. 

He  enjoyed  the  sensation  she  created:  but 
more  than  all,  being  an  old  gentleman,  he  en- 
joyed her  calm  indifference  to  it.  She  charmed 
him  as  a  character  study.  No  one  was  ever  quite 
clear  whether  she  was  very  stupid  or  very  good. 
As  a  matter-of-fact  it  had  taken  all  her  energies 
to  learn  what  she  had  learnt  since  her  slattern 
days,  and  she  had  none  to  spare  for  small  talk. 

"You  must  muzzle  that  husband  of  yours,"  he 
said  when  he  had  found  her  a  seat ;  "he  does  talk 
too  much,  you  know." 

She  looked  hurt. 

"  He  knows  best  what  to  say,  dear  Lord  Lis- 
tower," she  answered,  "he  is  so  clever.  Why  are 


Saints  in  Society  213 

they  all  so  cross  about  that  leader  in  his  paper? 
Surely  a  man  has  a  right  to  his  convictions? " 

"Surely,"  he  answered  purringly.  "What  are 
his  convictions?  Has  he  any?" 

"Oh!  you  are  unkind,"  she  said;  "please  say 
no  more." 

"Ask  Henry  what  he  thinks,  then.  You  and 
I  won't  quarrel — we  are  such  good  friends — 
Henry  shall  do  the  quarrelling." 

"  I  don't  understand  business,"  she  said  slowly, 
"but  I  see  my  husband  must  be  entirely  inde- 
pendent once  and  for  all.  I  believe  he  is  to  buy 
the  Mercury  from  Lord  Henry?  When  he  is  the 
proprietor  himself  he  may  write  his  own  leaders, 
may  he  not?"  she  smiled  rather  sadly. 

"You  must  write  them  for  him,"  he  answered, 
indulgently;  "you  are  still  the  Walworth  Radical 
—yet,  in  addition,  a  crowned  Queen." 

She  took  it  jokingly,  as  it  was  perhaps  meant, 
but  the  phrase  worried  her  afterwards  and  hung 
about  in  her  mind  like  a  cobweb.  "  You  are  still 
the  Walworth  Radical."  What  did  he  mean. 
Of  course  Mark  was  not  quite  the  same  as  in  the 
old  days — how  could  he  be?  There  was  his 
tremendous  work;  there  was  the  deep  complica- 
tion of  political  life;  there  was  first  of  all  his 


214  Saints  in  Society 

writing,  grown  so  famous,  and  now  his  editorship 
of  the  big  newspaper,  the  Daily  Mercury,  of  which 
Vade  had  become  proprietor.  All  these  things 
were  absorbing.  If  Mark  talked  less  about  the 
poor  they  knew,  and  even  saw  them  less,  she 
made  up  for  it,  and  he  knew  that  and  relied  upon 
her,  so  she  argued.  She  was  proud  of  the  re- 
liance. It  was  her  work.  Lord  Listower  did  not 
understand  him — could  not,  being  only  a  very 
courtly,  smiling  old  gentleman.  He  was  very 
kind  and  nice,  but  great  souls  were  beyond  him. 
He  could  not  comprehend  a  mind  like  Mark's. 
She  knew  Mark  as  he  really  was. 

Later  on  Crawshay  claimed  her  and  they 
strolled  along  a  grove  of  hydrangeas  and  lilies  to 
get  the  air,  finding  the  big  salon  too  close.  His 
admiration  for  her  was  as  unbounded  as  his 
family  feuds,  but  it  was  tempered  with  a  respect 
absolute  in  its  sincerity. 

"  How  are  the  slum  babies? "  he  asked. 

"Dear  things,"  she  answered,  an  honest 
flush  on  her  brow  giving  reality  to  her 
words,  "  they  are  doing  splendidly.  I  have  had 
to  take  the  next  house — the  old  one  was  too 
small." 

"  If  you  'd  gone  down  to  the  House  last  year," 


Saints  in  Society  215 

he  said,  his  eyes  sparkling  with  admiration,  "that 
Bill  would  have  gone  through.  You  seem  to  be 
able  to  carry  out  in  practice  all  that  your  husband 
talks  about." 

She  glanced  at  him  sharply.  She  was  growing 
painfully  alert  for  sarcasm  on  that  subject  in 
those  days,  and  acquiring  almost  a  defensive 
manner.  But  Crawshay  was  never  sarcastic — 
he  fought,  when  he  did  fight,  with  cudgels. 

"That  would  be  impossible,"  she  answered, 
"the  scheme  was  so  vast  and  so  wonderful  and  so 
good.  I  stick  to  my  little  corner  of  work — it  's 
what  I  have  been  always  used  to,  you  see.  Those 
people  are  my  old  friends." 

"You  angel,"  said  Crawshay  to  himself;  and 
"I  see,  "to  her. 

Clo  was  not  an  angel.  But  she  had  had  one 
great  advantage  in  her  peculiar  career,  she  had 
never  mixed  with  the  middle  classes.  She  had 
come  straight  from  the  lower  to  the  higher,  as 
a  bubble  shoots  up  to  the  sun,  and  she  had  not 
passed  through  the  tainting  fogs  of  middle-class 
snobbery  at  all.  Consequently  she  did  not 
understand  that  she  ought  to  look  down  on  the 
Walworth  folk,  and  it  never  occurred  to  her  to 
pretend  that  she  had  been  a  sort  of  small  "  some- 


216  Saints  in  Society 

body"  in  the  old  days.  She  was  as  frank  as  a 
beggar  or  a  queen. 

"But  everybody,"  continued  Crawshay,  "does- 
n't want  to  go  back  to  old  friends.  One  grows 
out  of  them,  don't  you  think?" 

"Oh!  possibly,  yes,  if  they're  quite  well  off 
and  happy  and  all  that,"  answered  she,  "  but  you 
see  mine  were  n't.  They  were  hungry  and  very 
miserable,  and  they  had  no  fires,  and  the  children 
had  no  boots.  I  did  not  myself  see  how  miserable 
they  were  till  my  husband's  career  took  me  away 
from  them.  Then  I  began  to  find  it  out.  But 
he  saw  it  all  along — he  had  the  eye  of  a  seer." 

Crawshay,  remembering  the  Daily  Mercury 
leader  turning  its  cruel  irony  on  to  that  very 
class,  forbore  to  whistle,  as  he  would  have  much 
liked  to  do.  He  turned  the  talk  to  lighter  things, 
and  hearing  music  in  an  inner  room  they  made 
their  way  in  that  direction.  Just  by  the  door  of 
the  music-room,  in  the  shadow,  two  figures  were 
standing  with  their  backs  to  Crawshay  and  Clo — 
a  man  and  a  woman.  As  the  others  approached 
she  heard  the  man  say: 

"  I  shall  always  believe  you  are  the  one  woman, 
Vera.  We  learn  these  things  too  late."  The 
voice  was  Mark's.  It  was  low  and  earnest.  There 


Saints  in  Society  217 

was  a  murmured  response  from  Emma  Hamilton 
&  la  Diana.  He  went  on  speaking.  Clo  drew 
back  with  a  sudden  chill  at  her  heart  and  turned 
to  retrace  her  steps.  At  the  rustle  of  her  silk 
dress  on  the  polished  floor  Veronica  slightly  turned 
her  head  and  her  hard  eyes  looked  mockingly  out 
of  the  dusk,  but  she  said  nothing.  She  had  seen 
Clo's  face.  Crawshay  followed  without  a  word, 
aware  of  the  clash.  Clo's  face  was  deadly  white, 
and  she  was  walking  straight  ahead  not  seeing 
where  she  was  going.  He  felt  in  a  miserable 
plight.  Suddenly  an  idea  occurred  to  him. 
There  was  Lady  Listower  over  by  a  fountain, 
talking  to  some  friends:  he  made  for  her,  Clo  at 
his  side. 

"Mrs.  Hading  's  not  feeling  well,"  he  said  on 
the  spur  of  the  moment. 

"Oh!  my  dear  child,"  said  Lady  Listower, 
"  you  look  quite  faint.  Let  me  drive  you  home — 
do.  I  'm  sick  of  this  dull  affair.  The  brougham 
can  come  back  for  Vera." 

"I  '11  tell  Mr.  Hading,"  said  Crawshay,  very 
red  in  the  face  and  turning  to  fetch  Mark. 

"No,  I  thank  you,"  said  Clo,  proudly,  "  I  do 
not  want — I  would  rather  go  with  Lady  Listower 
and  make  no  fuss.  If  you  will  tell  him,  please, 


218  Saints  in  Society 

that  I  have  gone,"  she  said  falteringly,  rather  as 
if  in  a  dream. 

He  saw  them  to  the  door  and  wrapped  Clo  in 
her  white  furred  cloak.  She  held  out  a  very  limp 
cold  hand  for  "good-night."  Lady  Listower 
bustled  him  off  more  sharply. 

"  There,  tell  Timmins  to  drive  on,"  she  croaked, 
"there  's  a  dear  man.  This  poor  child's  tired  out 
with  all  these  late  nights  and  all  her  hard  work. 
This  is  what  comes  of  being  married  to  a  social 
reformer." 

"I  'd  like  to  give  him  a  horse-whipping,"  said 
Crawshay  to  himself,  "  it  would  do  him  real,  per- 
manent good.  Jove!  I  'm  glad  I  haven't  any 
talents.  There  's  hardly  a  man  in  England  who 
can  stand  'em." 

Over  his  shoulder  he  called  out,  "I  '11  go  and 
tell  Lady  Vera  you  Ve  gone."  He  was  not  en- 
tirely without  talent,  of  sorts. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  Daily  Mercury  leader  about  which  every 
one  was  talking  had  taken  even  Mark's  own 
friends  by  surprise.  When  Vade  had  bought  the 
"rag"  and  put  Mark  in  as  editor  nine  months  ago 
the  thing  was  a  mere  name,  a  printed  sign  of  what 
had  once  been  a  powerful  party  organ.  It  had 
been  muddled  this  way  and  that  by  succeeding 
proprietors,  editors,  and  staffs  till,  after  thirty 
years  of  not  ignoble  wanderings,  it  had  come  down 
to  such  shifts  as  giving  away  directories,  selling 
coupons,  and  offering  petty  prizes.  At  this  stage 
in  its  career,  floating  derelict  upon  a  vague  journal- 
istic sea,  bound  for  nowhere  (and  bound  by  no 
one) ,  with  only  its  once-powerful  name  on  its  torn 
flag  to  keep  it  from  utterly  foundering — a  state  of 
things  only  possible  in  a  country  so  mercifully 
conservative  to  old  things  as  ours, — it  had  sud- 
denly been  towed  into  port  by  the  all-powerful 
hand  of  Vade.  Here  it  had  been  entirely  over- 
hauled and  freshly  rigged  by  its  new  owners,  and 

219 


220  Saints  in  Society 

set  sail  again  with  Mark  Hading  at  its  helm  and  a 
brand-new  staff  of  competent  journalists  tinder 
his  command. 

Hading's  twenty-two  years  in  a  printing-office, 
working  up  from  printer's  "devil"  at  fourteen  to 
master  printer  at  thirty,  and  onwards  for  a  year 
or  two,  had  stood  him  in  good  stead  at  this  junc- 
ture. He  had  cut  down  expenses  by  putting  in 
new  and  improved  machinery  requiring  fewer 
hands;  he  had  formed  adamant  office  rules  that 
would  confine  his  working  editorial  staff  to  a 
minimum  in  point  of  numbers,  producing  a  maxi- 
mum of  good,  efficient  labour.  He  had  made 
things  "hum"  from  the  very  first.  His  own 
daring,  declamatory,  yet  sufficiently  literary  style 
had  given  new  life  to  the  thing,  and  by  that  mys- 
terious force  which  makes  personality  tell  even 
through  the  medium  of  a  political  report,  he  had 
put  new  life,  new  character  into  the  thing. 

His  Child  Citizen  Bill,  being  too  Quixotic,  did 
not  pass,  but  it  made  his  name.  And  from  its 
date  he  became  a  popular  figure  in  the  social 
world — a  kind  of  champion  of  children.  His 
strong  set  face  and  far-seeing  eyes  helped  this 
impression  with  women.  He  was  quoted  as  a 
wonderful  sort  of  new  St.  George,  and  certainly 


Saints  in  Society  221 

looked  the  part.  And,  ominous  sign,  he  began  to 
enjoy  it. 

Other  big  questions  of  his  party  had  come  along, 
and  he  had  distinguished  himself  over  and  over 
again  as  a  passionate  pleader  and  marvellous 
speaker.  So  that,  as  a  newspaper  editor,  he 
started  clear  with  an  audience,  and  he  made  the 
most  of  it. 

From  prosperity  of  a  mild  sort  he  had  worked 
up  to  what  a  large  part  of  the  world  would  call 
wealth.  Not  only  were  his  independent  writings 
a  large  source  of  income,  but  the  paper  had  gone 
forward  by  leaps  and  bounds,  the  circulation  in 
three  months  of  its  new  life  marking  a  record  even 
in  this  age  of  big  papers.  The  Westminster  flat 
was  soon  found  to  be  as  absurdly  small  as  the 
Walworth  house,  and  Mark  had  taken  a  house  in 
Queen's  Gate;  and  Chloris  had  carriages,  serv- 
ants, and  clothes  such  as  she  could  never  have 
dreamed  of.  She  also  had  crowds  of  friends,  for 
Mark's  social  popularity  was  immense,  and  he  was 
forever  in  request.  His  wit,  his  good  spirits,  his 
enthusiasm,  his  fine  presence  were  welcome  things 
even  about  the  houses  of  people  who  thought  a 
Labour  member  a  sort  of  road  scavenger ;  and  his 
wife's  beauty,  good  taste,  and  most  fortunate 


222  Saints  in  Society 

tendency  to  silence,  completed  his  conquest  for 
him. 

But  a  year  had  gone  by  in  such  wise,  and  though 
he  was  stouter  in  figure  and  louder  in  voice  he  had 
not  gained  in  gay  spirits.  A  little  of  his  cheery 
lightness  was  gone,  and  his  wit  was  sharper,  and, 
though  highly  humorous  when  directed  at  your 
enemies,  not  so  quaint  when  you  yourself  became 
its  object.  A  certain  dogmatism  had  been  grow- 
ing in  his  public  utterances  of  late ;  but  the  world 
bowed — this  is  the  prerogative  of  genius.  Women 
raced  after  him  for  dinner-parties  and  house- 
parties;  a  growling  great  man  may  be  quite  as 
entertaining  as  an  urbane  one,  from  certain  points 
of  view.  Not  that  Mark  growled — he  cut.  His 
tongue  took  on,  sometimes,  the  character  of  a 
whip  lash.  After  all  he  was  a  reformer ;  they  are 
always  rude — at  least  the  professional  ones  are. 
So  that  the  world,  the  gay  world,  laughed  and 
giggled  and  enjoyed  it;  and  repeated  his  bitter 
mots  to  its  cronies  and  called  him  a  darling. 

Then  had  come  along  a  great  Labour  crisis, 
where  such  a  power  as  his  was  truly  needed.  Slack 
trade,  the  bitter  years  after  a  costly  war,  the  bit- 
terness of  foreign  competition,  the  inflooding  of 
aliens,  the  fearful  conditions  of  house  property 


Saints  in  Society  223 

and  the  rent  problem,  all  the  old,  old  cries  had 
made  themselves  heard  again  with  a  force  hardly 
equalled  since  the  riots  of  1884.  Children  were 
starving  and  suffering  in  millions,  as  in  such  cases 
they  are  bound  to  suffer  much  more  than  their 
elders;  and  to  the  Child  Champion  so  many 
looked  for  partisanship. 

A  great  epoch-making  relief  measure  was  at  this 
moment  before  the  House,  and  great  things  were 
hoped  of  it  even  by  those  whose  party  ideas 
differed  entirely  from  those  of  its  supporters. 
Then  the  Daily  Mercury  came  out  with  its  patron- 
ising and  insidious  but  cruel,  angry,  mean  sneer  at 
the  class  most  requiring  its  help.  His  friends 
thought  Hading  mad.  He  had  not  an  easy  time 
of  it  just  then.  But  he  stood  to  his  guns,  and 
with  such  drastic  tongue-play  that  some  of  them 
retired  amazed  and  rather  skinned. 

Vade,  not  easily  shaken  at  any  time,  ventured 
on  a  remonstrance.  He  was  met  by  a  cool  offer 
for  his  paper.  It  was  the  first  intimation  that 
they  two  should  no  longer  work  together.  Vade 
put  his  long,  pale  finger-tips  together  in  a  fan 
shape,  and  was  silent  for  a  space.  He  looked 
most  stupid;  but  he  was  in  reality  deeply  hurt. 
That  was  in  the  Daily  Mercury  office  the  morning 


224  Saints  in  Society 

following  the  Prime  Minister's  reception.  Mark's 
eyes  met  his  steadily ;  he  repeated  his  offer. 

"Very  well,"  said  Vade,  "I  will  think  it  over 
and  telephone  my  decision.  You  are  a  bigger 
kite,  Hading,  than  I  can  hold  in  a  high  wind. 
Your  future  is  your  own.  Remember  also,  how- 
ever, that  it  is  much  to  me,  from  the  friendship 
point  of  view." 

Mark  put  out  his  hand  in  his  old  frank  way  and 
wrung  Vade's,  but  his  face  was  a  study. 

"  If  you  knew  my  life,"  he  said  slowly,  "  and  my 
awful  struggles  you  would  not  blame  me.  You, 
and  men  like  you,  have  had  power  all  your  lives 
— you  were  born  to  it.  I  have  had  to  sweat  and 
weep  tears  of  blood  for  it.  Now  I  Ve  got  it  I 
must  use  it.  I  Ve  got  a  club  in  my  hand,  after 
being  bound  all  my  life:  I  must  use  it." 

"Well,"  said  Vade,  shaking  a  sort  of  lightness 
into  his  voice,  "come  and  dine  with  me  to-night 
and  we  '11  set  matters  in  what  order  we  can. 
There  comes  a  time  when  you  big  chaps  must 
forge  ahead  alone  without  let  or  hindrance.  Rise 
or  sink  on  your  own,  eh?" 

"  I  shall  not  sink,"  said  the  great  man,  arro- 
gantly, "  don't  you  fear.  I  'm  bound  to  rise." 

"A-h,"  said  Vade,  "after  all,  it  's  a  matter  of 


Saints  in  Society  225 

definition — failure  or  success.  I  wish  you  luck, 
dear  man,  I  wish  you  luck." 

And  he  minced  out,  his  pale  grey,  skin-tight 
morning  suit  fitting  on  his  thin  figure  in  faultless 
long  lines,  his  white  eyelashes  hiding  his  blue  eyes, 
that  smiled  now  as  much  as  ever  though  his  heart 
was  sad,  carrying  a  stick  that  had  a  murdered 
Pope's  ring  set  in  its  quaint  ivory  handle,  and  a 
watch-guard  that  bore  in  a  green  turquoise  casket 
the  hair  of  a  love-sick  Stuart  Queen, — the  image 
of  decadent  foppery,  and  as  good  a  friend  as 
Jonathan. 

Behind  the  swinging  of  the  baize  doors,  his 
disciple  and  mental  superior — his  very  human 
David — sat  staring  unseeingly  at  the  piles  of 
papers  on  his  desk. 

To  his  hand,  with  a  little  more  effort,  now  lay 
wealth  and  homage.  He  already  had  the  latter; 
the  former  was  nearly  his.  When  he  had  both 
really  and  finally  in  his  grasp  he  would  use  them 
well — only  let  him  get  them — hold  them.  Then 
they  could  be  turned  to  the  good  of  the  world ;  to 
the  good  of  his  old  companions,  his  poor  "  labour- 
ing brethren."  He  still  used  the  phrase,  even  to 
himself,  only  it  was  cant  now  where  it  used  to  be 
sincerity.  He  shook  himself  angrily  because  he 
15 


226  Saints  in  Society 

was  half  aware  of  this.  After  all,  the  working  man 
was  a  great  ass  in  many  ways.  See,  now,  what  he 
might  do  if  he  tried.  "  Look,"  said  Mark  to  him- 
self, "at  me  now.  What  help  had  I?  I  had  to 
make  my  way."  Yet  these  poor  chaps  with  the 
squalid  houses  and  the  dirty  hands  and  the  beastly 
manners — really  beastly,  he  thought,  recollecting 
a  recent  most  rowdy  and  disgraceful  meeting 
down  in  Walworth,  where  he  had  met  his  con- 
stituents after  a  rather  long  abstention  from  that 
pleasure — they  would  talk  as  though  it  was  the 
world's  fault  that  they  suffered.  And  did  they 
suffer?  Not  much,  he  began  to  think.  A  lot  of 
twaddle  was  talked  about  that  and  other  things. 
Anyhow,  they  could  smoke  and  drink  enough  to 
drown  it — and  did  too;  and  their  gambling  was 
sickening.  He  had  always  raved  against  that 
from  the  first.  He  did  still,  for  that  matter. 
Even  now,  with  all  his  temptations  to  do  other- 
wise, he  never  played  bridge,  or  smoked.  He 
recollected  this  fact  with  a  sensation  of  real  grati- 
tude to  himself.  True,  he  was  no  longer  quite  a 
teetotaller,  because  you  must  take  your  wine  at 
a  man's  table;  and  there  had  been  other  little 
things  that  he  had  been  obliged  to  alter — for  in- 
stance, wearing  evening  dress,  which  he  had 


Saints  in  Society  227 

sneered  at  in  the  old  days  as  the  mark  of  brainless 
fops  and  tyrants,  below  great  minds  such  as  his. 
That  was  before  he  had  made  his  appearance  at 
the  Lord  Mayor's  banquet  in  a  rather  dirty  morn- 
ing coat  and  grey  trousers  and  a  red  tie.  Some- 
how, what  he  went  through  that  night  had  burnt 
itself  into  his  soul,  and  he  had  given  way  to  con- 
vention in  that  matter  ever  after. 

But  these  chaps,  the  working  men,  were  they 
grateful?  Not  they.  What  was  a  life  spent  for 
them?  They  didn't  care.  He  might  kill  him- 
self for  them.  Would  they  thank  him  ?  Not  they. 
As  it  was,  they  made  his  life  a  burden  with  their 
maniac  deputations,  their  fool's  interference,  their 
crazy  insults.  Was  n't  he  doing  it  all  for  them, 
and  making  a  name  too,  which  would  enable  him 
to  do  yet  more?  Of  course  he  was. 

Then  the  religious  question — could  a  fellow 
drag  that  into  the  Houses  of  Parliament?  Abso- 
lutely it  would  n't  be  decent.  Just  picture,  now, 
a  speech  about  the  leader  of  Christianity  in  the 
very  teeth  of  a  grinning  Opposition.  Was  it 
necessary?  No.  He  broke  a  penholder  angrily 
as  he  confessed  this  decision.  Then  his  heart  was 
soothed  with  another  happy  thought,  equivalent 
to  the  gambling  inspiration.  Was  n't  he  going  to 


228  Saints  in  Society 

teach  them,  religion,  if  you  like,  lots  of  other  good 
ways,  when  he  got  "things"  into  his  own  hands? 
There  was  the  crux — it  was  "  things"  that  wanted 
controlling.  When  he  reached  that  consumma- 
tion he  would  teach  them  right  enough — be  the 
moral  leader,  the  champion  of  truth,  and  all  that. 
He  could.  He  had  the  talent. 

His  wife  worked  so  even  now  for  children;  it 
amused  her  and  was  consistent  with  his  position. 
He  liked  her  to  do  it.  But,  of  course,  later  on 
he  would  take  up  the  matter  himself  on  a  much 
larger  scale  and  set  it  in  full  swing.  Just  now 
he  was  up  to  his  eyes.  There  were  questions  to 
settle,  enemies  to  square,  daily  engagements 
innumerable.  Enemies,  good  Lord!  He  had 
enough,  if  any  man  had.  A  prophet  hath  no 
honour  in  his  own  country,  he  said  to  himself 
grimly.  He  was  a  prophet,  understood  by  none — 
yes,  well  one.  Vera  understood  him.  His  eyes 
narrowed  a  little,  just  a  little,  at  the  thought,  and 
he  smiled.  Those  were  the  women  to  help  men 
on — those  sympathetic,  brainy,  clever  women, 
who  yet  looked  so  bewitching,  like  Vera.  Women 
who  understood  you  at  half  a  thought,  half -ex- 
pressed. Women  with  those  understanding  eye- 
lashes. What  was  it?  Clo,  dear  good  girl,  had  n't 


Saints  in  Society  229 

understanding  eyelashes.  Sometimes  he  thought 
she  did  not  really  understand  him  in  many  ways. 
She  was  always  saying  "why?"  to  such  subtle 
sort  of  problems — things  no  fellow  living  could 
explain,  but  obvious  things  for  all  that.  Thank 
Heaven  she  was  a  good  girl  and  had  turned  out 
much  better  than  any  one  would  have  dreamed 
who  had  known  the  Walworth  slattern  of  the  old 
days.  Religion  suited  her.  She  was  handsome, 
too,  in  her  way.  She  did  him  credit.  But  she 
had  not,  of  course,  the  inborn  charm,  the  sym- 
pathy, the  tact — yes,  that  was  the  word,  tact — 
of  a  high-born  lady,  a  genuine  aristocrat  like  Vera. 
Vera  was  all  tact.  The  more  he  thought  the  word 
the  more  he  liked  it.  It  was  really  such  a  re- 
spectable way  of  describing  Jong  eyelashes. 

And  then  how  gracefully  it  covered  qualms  as 
to  long  hand-clasps,  and  long  looks.  Yes,  it  was 
an  elastic,  a  graceful  word.  Cheered  up  he  came 
back  to  business  and  the  world. 

In  a  week  he  became  sole  possessor  of  the  Daily 
Mercury,  and  from  that  hour  his  wealth  steadily 
increased.  Before  another  two  months  were  out 
he  had  bought  another  paper,  a  smaller  thing  it 
is  true  and  on  his  own  terms — not  Quixotic  terms, 
— and  started  running  that  with  as  much  success 


230  Saints  in  Society 

in  its  way  as  the  first.  His  duties  were  super- 
human, yet  his  thick-set,  powerful  frame  seemed 
none  the  worse  for  them.  He  always  took  him- 
self out  of  town  for  week-ends  of  golf  and  vigorous 
exercise,  and  came  back  as  a  giant  refreshed  to 
new  labours — those  labours  for  the  working  poor. 
Sometimes  Clo  went  with  him  on  these  week- 
end visits  to  smart  country  houses;  sometimes 
she  stayed  at  home  and  drove  down  after  church 
to  Wai  worth,  where  her  little  settlement  had  as- 
sumed ample  proportions.  Her  club  meetings 
now  filled  two  houses  and  she  was  negotiating  for 
a  third.  Dorcas  Deane  had  become  paid  superin- 
tendent, having  undertaken  this  work  in  place  of 
her  former  post  as  Mission  woman,  though  she 
still  got  in  as  much  district  work  as  ever  by  some 
wonderful  rule  by  which  she  always  seemed  to 
have  more  time  for  others  than  anybody  else. 
Three  hundred  children  were  on  their  books  for 
assistance  and  instruction.  The  tattered  things, 
whose  hours  out  of  school  they  so  cheerfully  pro- 
vided for,  came  begging  daily  with  a  new  com- 
panion to  be  admitted  as  a  member :  small  things 
in  fluttering  rags,  with  boots  that  sagged  at  the 
sides  and  gaped  in  the  front  showing  little  blue 
toes;  things  with  matted  hair  and  eyes  like 


Saints  in  Society  231 

Maltese  terriers  and  thin  gruff  voices — little  hu- 
man marmosets,  very  hungry,  very  ignorant,  with 
no  morals  but  much  humour ;  with  strange  words, 
and  yet,  by  the  oddest  of  laws,  good  manners. 
Cockney  slum  babies  have  such  good  manners,  if 
you  speak  to  them  kindly — -one  wonders  how  and 
why? 

"  Please  'm,"  such  an  imp  would  say,  pushing 
out  a  dirty  paw  and  looking  shrewdly  up  at  the 
pretty,  pretty  lady  like  a  doll  all  in  fur  and  silks 
who  smiled  down  at  her  so  softly,  "please  'm,  can 
I  join  the  Club?  I  wants  some  boots — look,  me 
toes  comes  through.  I  'm  very  nungry,  an'  I  've 
got  a  brother  at  'ome  very  nungry.  Eh?" 

"I  will  see,"  Chloris  would  answer,  "but  you 
know  our  Club  is  not  to  give  you  boots  but  to 
make  you  grow  up  into  good  men  and  women." 

"Yes,"  the  marmoset  would  answer  with  a 
grin. 

"And  do  you  think  you  could  do  that?"  says 
Chloris. 

"Yes,  when  I  gets  a  pair  o'  boots  an'  some- 
thing good  to  eat,"  replied  the  convert-to-be; 
"  my  brother  's  very  good  a'ready,  but  still  he  's 
very  nungry." 

To  such  as  these  Clo  could  not  turn  a  deaf  ear. 


232  Saints  in  Society 

Another,  a  thin  old  man  of  nine  years  old,  with  an 
ancient,  long,  skeleton's  face  and  great  fever- 
haunted  eyes,  dressed  in  what  once  was  a  sailor 
suit  with  a  bit  of  tattered  Nottingham  curtain 
lace  where  the  flannel  front  should  be,  came  and 
asked  admittance,  even  as  a  Spanish  grandee 
might  have  asked  it,  with  a  still  stateliness. 

"Ah,  dear  heart,"  said  Dorcas  Deane,  in  ready 
tears,  "  he  came  last  night  in  the  rain  and  sleet. 
I  told  him  to  come  again  to  see  you.  He  has  no 
shirt — and,  dear  God,  he  has  no  childliness  left  in 
him.  In  heaven  he  will  be  a  child — here  he  is  an 
old,  old  man."  Her  voice  broke. 

Clo  drew  him  to  her. 

"What  is  this?"  she  said.  "Have  you  no 
shirt?"  She  felt  his  thin  sailor  blouse  through 
which  his  tiny  ribs  were  easily  distinguished  by 
the  hand.  He  had  a  body  like  a  stick. 

"  No,  ma'am,"  he  answered  primly,  in  Quixote's 
own  manner,  "  and  the  weather  is  cold,  is  it  not  ? ' ' 

It  was  a  blizzard.  But  the  tone,  the  air,  the 
grace  were  those  of  a  courtier  to  a  duchess. 
Chloris,  too,  lost  her  voice.  She  sent  Dorcas  for 
some  flannel  clothes  her  friends  supplied  her  with, 
or  paid  for.  She  gave  him  little  sets  of  these.  He 
took  them  with  stateliness  yet  gratitude. 


Saints  in  Society  233 

"Thank  you,"  he  said,  lifting  his  peaky  face 
and  looking  at  her  between  blinking  red  eyelids, 
"  I  will  put  one  on  at  once." 

"Aren't  they  a  little  large  for  him?"  said  Clo 
to  Dorcas. 

"  They  will  allow  me  to  grow,  ma'am,"  said  the 
scraggy  imp,  proudly  hugging  them. 

"  If  the  world  will,"  said  Dorcas,  solemnly, 
under  her  breath. 


CHAPTER  XV 

ONE  day, when  Clo  was  busy  in  her  morning- 
room  answering  endless  notes  of  invitation , 
Mark  came  into  the  room  in  his  quick,  bustling 
fashion  and  asked  to  speak  to  her.  He  had  not 
troubled  her  with  his  presence  in  her  own  part 
of  the  house  for  many  a  long  day,  and  she  looked 
up  eagerly  to  see  if  anything  were  wrong. 

"It's  about  your  presentation,"  he  said.  "I 
want  you  to  go  to  the  next  Court." 

"  I  go  to  Court  ? "  she  said.     "  Could  I,  Mark? " 

"  Could  you  ?  What  could  n't  my  wife  do  ? "  he 
asked  a  little  sharply. 

"Well,"  said  Clo,  meditatively,  "of  course  the 
Woollenscheims  went  last  time,  and " 

"The  Woollenscheims?  Those  Judy  Jewesses 
with  their  red  wigs  and  thick  tongues?  What  will 
you  say  next?  Remember  you  are  a  woman  of 
position  and  importance  as  my  wife,  and  please 
do  try  to  live  up  to  it.  It  will  help  me  for  you  to 
be  presented — that  should  be  enough." 

234 


Saints  in  Society  235 

"  I  always  wanted  to  help  you  in  your  great 
work,  Mark,"  she  said;  "I'm  trying  now.  Of 
course  I  '11  go.  How  will  it  help  the  poor  child- 
ren? Will  the  King " 

"  Really,"  he  said,  "  I  cannot  quite  explain.  It 
would  take  too  long.  But  it  will  help — er — er — 
all  of  our  plans.  Oh!  and  Lady  Listower  will 
present  you — in  fact,  she  has  offered." 

"  How  kind  of  her!"  cried  Clo. 

"  Yes,  she  seemed  to  be  positively  urgent  about 
it.  She  's  got  some  motive  in  that  connection — 
can't  quite  make  out  what  it  is.  Never  mind, 
so  long  as  it  fits  in  with  my  wishes." 

"Kindness,"  said  Clo,  "kindness  would  be  all 
her  reason.  You  know  what  a  dear  she  is." 

"Kindness,"  said  Mark,  turning  to  go;  "that  's 
all  you  know  of  the  world!  Very  likely,  indeed," 
he  laughed  shortly.  "  However,  consult  her  about 
your  dress,  and  spare  no  expense.  I  want  you  to 
look  your  best  and  do  me  every  possible  credit." 

Clo  flushed.  It  was  so  long  since  he  had  even 
taken  a  passing  interest  in  her  looks ;  he  was  too 
busy,  too  full  of  plans.  And  since  that  bitter 
night  at  the  Prime  Minister's  she  had  solemnly 
and  silently  put  away  all  hope  that  he  ever  would 
again.  Clo  was  a  hopelessly  inarticulate  woman. 


236  Saints  in  Society 

She  had  never  mentioned  that  night,  or  what  she 
had  heard,  to  Mark,  or  indeed  any  one.  She  was 
too  dumb  where  her  heart  was  deeply  concerned ; 
she  could  never  have  been  the  screaming  heroine 
of  our  matinee  melodrama.  Her  words  were  few- 
est when  her  heart  was  most  sad. 

But  she  was  very  expeditious  in  making  her 
plans  for  the  presentation,  which  excited  her 
pleasurably  to  think  about.  And  she  hurried  to 
Little  Chudleigh  Street  quite  early  one  morning 
(about  11.45)  to  catch  Lady  Listower  before  her 
morning  drive  for  a  word  or  two's  advice. 

My  lady  was  not  down,  said  the  man;  she 
would  appear  directly,  however.  Clo  was  shown 
into  the  study,  a  wide  and  beautiful  apartment, 
where  Bunny  was  seated  drinking,  with  great 
solemnity,  a  glass  of  iced  water,  and  staring  out 
of  the  window  at  an  exhilarating  view  of  drab 
brick  stables  and  roofs. 

"Oh!  but  how  do  you  do,  Mrs.  Hading?"  said 
Bunny,  leaping  up  and  offering  Clo  a  chair.  His 
real  name  was  Bentinck — Lord  Bentinck  Vade. 
The  name  of  Bunny  was  most  unsuited  to  his 
door-handle  countenance. 

Clo  greeted  him  cordially.  The  two  boys  and 
she  were  on  excellent  terms. 


Saints  in  Society  237 

"Jove,"  said  Bunny,  "what  a  day!  What  a 
beastly  day." 

"I  thought  it  lovely,"  said  Clo,  glancing  out 
at  the  bright  May  sunshine.  "  I  walked  across  the 
Park." 

"  Well,  I  'm  taking  up  a  new  cure,"  said  Bunny, 
thoughtfully. 

"  For  what?"  asked  Clo. 

"For  what?  For  everything.  Things  are  so 
rotten.  Good  Lord,  don't  every  one  agree  things 
are  rotten?  Life  's  all  wrong." 

"  I  like  life,"  ventured  Clo. 

"You  do?"  he  said,  staring  at  her  with  his 
globular  eyes.  "You  really  look  as  if  you  did. 
Ah,  you  see  now,  that  's  your  yeoman  blood — the 
middle  classes  have  us  there.  You  are  not 
offended,  are  you?  You  yourself  once  said 
something  of  the  sort  to  me.  But  it 's  our  blue 
blood — our  blue  blood  that  plays  the  very 
dickens." 

"Oh,  I  do  not  mind,"  answered  Clo,  "only  I 
really  do  not  think  the  middle  classes  would  own 
me.  Still,  do  you  take  iced  water — or  is  it  iced 
Seltzer? — to  cure  blue  blood?" 

"No,  no,  only  to  thin  it,"  answered  Bunny, 
sadly;  "this  is  my  theory.  Look  at  the  Amer- 


238  Saints  in  Society 

icans — they  live  on  iced  water,  now,  don't  they  ? 
American  women  and  all  that.  Now  see  what 
nerve  they  Ve  got — (I  have  n't  a  rag  of  nerve) — 
look  what  physique  they  have,  what  keenness, 
what  dash.  And  they  live  on  iced  water.  Now, 
when  I  come  to  think  of  it,  you  look  a  bit  like 
an  American  woman.  Do  you  ever  take  iced 
water?" 

Clo  laughingly  disclaimed.  She  said  she  was 
afraid  it  was  purely  plebeian  blood. 

"  I  think,"  said  Bunny,  surveying  her  solemnly 
and  holding  the  empty  glass  in  his  hand,  "  I  must 
marry  a  plebeian  woman.  By  Jove !  they  're  like 
goddesses — you  are  now." 

At  this  moment  Lady  Listower  came  fussing 
and  rustling  into  the  room,  all  furs  and  silks  and 
jingles. 

"Go  away,  Bunny,"  she  said  crossly,  "don't  be 
silly.  Mrs.  Hading  hates  you — you  're  a  great 
nuisance,  and  very  disgusting  with  your  iced 
rubbish." 

Bunny,  of  the  grey,  resigned  countenance,  got 
up  and  went,  aimlessly  smiling  quite  tenderly 
upon  both  his  mother  and  her  visitor,  and  quite 
unruffled  by  his  dismissal.  Lady  Listower  sat 
down,  puffing. 


Saints  in  Society  239 

"My  son  Creek,"  she  said,  holding  out  a 
coroneted  letter  gingerly,  a  letter  in  huge  femi- 
nine handwriting,  "has  another  child,  as  you 
have,  of  course,  seen  in  the  Times."  She  would 
not  admit  that  Lady  Creek  had  greatly  assisted 
in  the  matter.  "  That  means  a  present.  Are  you 
going  the  Stores  way?  and  will  you  drive  with  me 
there?" 

Clo  assented  and  they  drove  together  through 
the  gay  streets  and  dancing  wind  and  sunshine, 
attracting  attention  enough  on  their  way  to  satisfy 
the  vainest  of  mortals. 

"Creek,"  continued  her  ladyship,  whose  mind 
was  thus  hampered  by  her  obnoxious  elder  son 
who  had  disinherited  Henry,  "Creek  was  born  on 
just  such  a  morning  as  this.  He  was  a  puny,  poor 
little  thing.  We  never  thought  he  would  get  over 
the  chicken-pox ;  but  he  did,  and  now  he  's  in  the 
Lords,  where  dear  Henry  with  his  talents  ought 
to  be." 

Clo,  with  a  vague  impression  from  this  that 
Viscount  Creek  still  bore  traces  of  chicken-pox, 
agreed  cheerfully. 

"May,"  said  Lady  Listower,  "is  a  bad  month 
to  be  born  in.  That 's  the  second  baby  they  Ve 
had — another  chance  less  for  dear  Henry.  I  must 


240  Saints  in  Society 

buy  it  something,  I  suppose,  in  case  it  lives.  A 
cheap  manicure  set,  say,  or  flannels,  or  something 
really  useful.  I  think,"  said  the  proud  grand- 
mother, "  something  useful  with  a  Stores  discount 
off  it  would  bore  any  one,  don't  you?" 

Clo  thought  it  would.     Then  she  grew  bolder. 

"But  your  little  sweet,"  she  said,  "he  cannot 
be  bored  yet,  can  he?  And  suppose,  dear  Lady 
Listower,  only  suppose  if  later  on  he  grew  to  re- 
semble Lord  Henry?  He  might,  you  know." 

This  view  had  never  struck  her  ladyship. 

"Well,  so  he  might,"  she  said  slowly.  "I 
think  I  '11  see  before  I  send  him  that  Stores 
present.  Timmins — the  Park." 

They  wheeled  round  as  suddenly  as  the  idea 
struck  her,  and  made  for  the  Park.  Chloris  re- 
minded her  about  the  Court.  She  was  only  too 
ready  to  be  interested.  They  were  passing  Bond 
Street  and  she  made  the  long-suffering  Timmins 
abandon  the  Park  and  drive  up  that  pregnant 
thoroughfare  to  her  own  Court  dressmaker  for  a 
long  consultation.  After  half  an  hour,  when  they 
emerged  from  this  palace,  tired  but  victorious, 
her  ladyship  said : 

"You  will  look  lovely,  you  nice  thing! — a 
dream.  I  told  your  husband  that  I  insisted  on 


Saints  in  Society  241 

his  letting  me  take  you  as  I  hear  that  that  hor- 
rible old  Julia  Mount- Amor"  (mentioning  a  well- 
known  Marchioness)  "is  taking  that  ugly  girl  of 
her  sister,  Anne  Cartney — you  know  the  one  that 
had  the  scandal  about  her  in  the  'Seventies — no, 
you  won't  remember — before  your  time.  Tire- 
some woman,  with  a  tongue.  Had  to  go  on  her 
knees  to  get  the  great  Julia  to  do  it,  though. 
And  the  girl 's  fat,  with  turned-in  toes,  and  a 
voice  like  a  banjo;  and  her  mother's  own  spite. 
What  a  world  it  is!" 

Clo  agreed  that  it  was  certainly  diverting. 

"  I  think  it  's  dull,"  said  Lady  Listower,  heavily ; 
"it 's  all  new  to  you,  and  all  that.  You  won't 
always  find  it  funny.  If  you  'd  been,  like  me,  to 
every  Court  in  Europe,  you  would  n't  have  a 
laugh  left — not  a  smile.  Women  are  such  cats — 
and  men  are  no  better.  This  precious  girl  of 
Anne  Cartney's  set  her  cap  at  dear  Henry — think 
of  it!  The  impudence.  Dear  Henry!  But  hap- 
pily the  sweet  child  escaped." 

Clo  meditated  that  escape  from  a  pair  of  turned- 
in  toes,  a  voice  like  a  banjo,  extreme  bulk  and 
spite,  need  not  have  been  regarded  as  Galahadian, 
but  she  forbore  to  say  so. 

The  day  of  the  presentation  arrived  and  brought 

16 


242  Saints  in  Society 

with  it  to  this  child  of  small  beginnings  real, 
genuine,  delicious  excitement.  She  had  been 
coached  in  her  "paces,"  she  had  received  odd 
tags  of  advice  from  Lady  Listower,  and  sarcastic 
advice  from  Pegram.  Lord  Listower  told  her  she 
could  not  go  wrong  if  she  were  quite  naturally 
herself. 

"Do  not  forget,"  he  said,  smiling  inanely,  "or 
try  to  forget,  the  flesh-pots  of  Walworth.  That 
would  ruin  you  and  give  you  a  'risen'  look — a 
fatal,  fatal  look,  my  dear.  Recollect,  even  in  the 
ante-room  if  you  like — even  in  the  Throne  Room 
— who  and  what  you  really  are.  Think  of  rabbit- 
skins.  Think  of  dirty  children — the  children  you 
try  to  help.  I  assure  you  it  is  good  advice  I  am 
giving  you.  The  recollection  of  one's  naked  soul 
in  no  way  ruins  the  complexion ;  and  it  certainly 
helps  to  steady  the  head.  It  is  most  unfortunate 
that  I  find  myself  preaching  to  one  so  pretty. 
Positively  I  am  growing  old." 

It  is  a  necessary  part  of  this  story  to  relate  that 
Clo's  dress  was  lovely :  dress  is  not  so  unimportant 
a  factor  in  life  as  the  superior  person  would  have 
us  believe.  All  dress  is  symbolic,  of  course,  and 
a  Court  gown  can  be  very  symbolic  indeed.  Of 
all  others  it  reveals  the  reality  of  the  woman  who 


Saints  in  Society  243 

wears  it.  There  is  something  in  the  long,  simple 
lines,  the  stately  train,  the  plumed  head,  the  veil, 
the  air  of  robed  mystery  which  seems  completely 
to  give  away  those  who  have  no  mystery  of  the 
right  sort  to  robe  and  to  set  forth  in  new  majesty 
those  who  were  all  along  worthy  of  such  a  setting. 
The  fussy,  lower  middle-class  whilom  Jewess, 
who  makes  such  a  noise  and  screams  so  about 
herself,  and  "runs  down"  her  friends,  and  dies  to 
outshine  them;  and  calls  honest  Nathan  "Nor- 
ton," and  Moses  "  Moss,"  and  Daniels  "  Danvers," 
shrivels  a  little  in  Court  attire.  You  met  her  yes- 
terday, half  buried  in  her  furs,  whirling  through 
the  Park,  whereon  her  beady  black  eyes  shone 
vivaciously  under  her  Paris  hat,  and  she  produced 
a  sense  of  good  looks,  of  pomp  and  splendour. 
To-day  she  comes,  as  she  indeed  can  afford  to 
come,  to  Court.  Why  is  she  smaller  in  that  great 
glistening  white  robe?  Why  is  her  very  stature 
less?  Why  do  you  now  see  the  real  hook  of  her 
otherwise  pleasantly  aquiline  nose?  Why  is  her 
dark  hair  so  suddenly  coarse  and  frizzed?  And 
why,  oh!  why  is  she  suddenly  too  short  from  hip 
to  toe,  and  too  long  in  the  back?  Perhaps  it  is 
because  this  chaste  regal  attire  will  not  go  well 
with  hard,  eager  eyes,  lips  tight  and  grinning  and 


244  Saints  in  Society 

spasmodic  with  the  greed  to  be  first,  first,  first. 
Oh!  unit  in  this  vast  brave  universe,  if  you  could 
only  take  your  place  as  a  unit,  how  you  might 
evolve  into  the  very  thing  you  strive  for  and  now 
fail  utterly  to  get  through  striving. 

It  is  not  "preaching" — it  is  absolute,  logical 
fact,  that  the  mind  and  soul  are  part  and  parcel 
of  human  beauty.  Clo  came  from  a  stock  no  bet- 
ter, and  certainly  not  so  old  as  this  Israelitish 
lady,  whose  forbears  were  possibly  some  of  the 
finest,  most  noble,  and  self-sacrificing  men  of  that 
alien,  that  dignified,  that  brilliant,  and  law-abiding 
people.  But  the  last  two  generations  of  Nathan 
had  been  Norton — they  began  to  be  so  when  they 
left  Kilburn  for  Regent's  Park;  and  their  late 
move  to  Park  Lane  confirmed  it.  And  they  are 
ashamed  of  Nathan,  and  shame  of  that  sort  is 
very  unbecoming. 

Clo's  father  was  a  poor  printer  in  Walworth, 
but  he  taught  himself  considerably  more  than 
Eton  and  Oxford  together  can  teach  many  per- 
sons, by  plodding  with  blinking  eyes  and  weary, 
horny  hands  at  little  grubby  books  at  night 
classes — and  he  lived  a  very  straight,  if  a  very 
dull,  life.  And  Clo,  too,  blindly,  and  stupidly,  and 
inarticulately,  had  tried  to  teach  herself  the 


Saints  in  Society  245 

"better  part,"  or  her  human,  slow  conception  of 
it.  Poor  Clo.  She  was  not  brilliant.  You  never 
could  make  her  talk  much.  But  just  now,  in  the 
gala-lighted  house  in  Queen's  Gate,  coming  down 
the  stairs,  followed  by  chattering,  fluttering  maids 
holding  up  her  immense  train,  she  was  a  sight 
to  dream  of,  not  to  see.  It  was  not  only  the 
billowing  away  of  that  sea  of  softly  glistening 
foam,  not  the  long,  undulating  line  from  neck  to 
foot  of  perfect  grace,  nor  her  undoubted  beauty; 
it  was  a  queenliness  in  her  kind  eyes,  her  stately 
brow,  a  look  of  lovely  purpose  in  a  face  designed 
for  loveliness — a  look  of  serenity,  of  gentleness, 
of  calm — a  look  you  cannot  put  on  at  once  to 
suit  an  occasion,  but  a  record  of  weeks  and  months 
and  years  of  higher,  gentler  things.  She  wore 
pearls  and  diamonds  set  in  silver,  and  her  hair  was 
dressed  &  la  Elizabeth  of  Austria.  To-night  she 
looked  like  the  "  Blessed  Damozel"  of  Rossetti  in 
a  mist. 

Lady  Listower  was  to  call  for  her.  The  time 
still  allowed  her  a  few  minutes.  She  turned 
and  sailed  into  the  drawing-room.  On  a  satin 
sofa,  red  and  hysterical,  sat  Mrs.  Tombs,  staring 
at  the  door  from  between  the  waving  tumult  of 
jet  earrings.  By*  the  fireplace  sat  Dorcas  Deane 


246  Saints  in  Society 

with  folded  hands.  And  standing  with  his  back 
to  it,  an  air  of  real  happiness  on  his  ruddy  coun- 
tenance, stood  Sir  Samuel  Crawshay,  his  red  curls 
shining,  and  his  immaculate  evening  array  con- 
trasting oddly  with  his  companions.  As  the 
ecstatic  vision  of  Clo  entered  the  room  this  odd 
group  simply  gazed,  Crawshay  coming  forward  to 
say  he  had  called  to  see  Mark,  who  told  him  he 
might  wait  to  greet  her  before  going.  He  ex- 
plained that  Mark  was  there  a  minute  ago  but  had 
had  to  go  somewhere  in  a  hurry. 

"  He  did  not  know  these  ladies,  I  think,"  said 
Crawshay,  unconsciously  sardonic. 

Clo  went  up  to  Mrs.  Tombs,  her  arms  out,  and 
kissed  her  heartily.  She  did  the  same  to  Dorcas 
Deane,  who  was  very  white  and  still,  and  wore  a 
look  of  deep  thoughtfulness. 

"My  two  dears,"  said  Clo,  simply,  "have  you 
waited  for  me  long?  I  am  so  sorry.  I  told  you 
the  time  but  I  fear  I  am  late.  These  things  take 
some  getting  into,  you  see." 

Mrs.  Tombs  was  too  tremulous  to  speak,  gazing 
at  Clo  as  in  a  dream.  Crawshay  answered  :  "  We 
have  had  a  most  interesting  conversation,  all 
about  the  Prince  Consort.  This  lady  told  me 
much  about  him  that  I  have  never  heard  before. 


Saints  in  Society  247 

We  all  amused  ourselves.  We  wanted  to  see  you, 
but  we  have  not  been  dull.  Now  we  are  quite 
content." 

He  said  this  beamingly  and  frankly  in  his  almost 
boyish  way.  But  Clo  was  dimly  conscious  that 
he  was  covering  something  up,  purposely. 

"  Where  did  you  say  Mark  has  gone? "  she  asked 
him. 

"Can't  say,  Mrs.  Hading.  He  went  off  sud- 
denly. I  'm  afraid  I  did  n't  catch  where.  He  '11  be 
back  soon  enough — you've  got  some  minutes  yet." 

Clo  rang  for  refreshment  for  her  two  women 
guests,  though  they  were  both  too  startled  and 
too  abashed  to  partake. 

"Now,  look  here,  Mrs.  Tombs,"  said  Crawshay, 
who  insisted  at  this  juncture  upon  an  introduction 
to  both  in  great  form,  "  you  must  have  some  wine. 
I  '11  tell  you,  now — I  'm  a  man  who  must  have  such 
things  sociably,  yet  how  can  I  take  mine  if  you 
refuse  yours?  I  '11  tell  you  what — you  '11  drive 
me  to  having  it  all  by  myself  in  dreadful  places 
called  Blue  Pigs  and  Green  Lions  and  Mottled 
Unicorns.  You  would  n't  have  that  on  your  con- 
science, now,  would  you?" 

Mrs.  Tombs  smiled  faintly,  a  little  restored  by 
the  great  familiarity  of  this  "Duke." 


248  Saints  in  Society 

"  Aiii't  she  lovely?"  she  said  in  a  whisper,  taking 
her  wine,  while  Crawshay  touched  her  glass  gal- 
lantly with  his  liqueur. 

"Rather,"  said  Crawshay. 

"  I  never,  never  saw  her  likes,"  went  on  the  old 
soul. 

"No,  by  Jove!  Neither  did  n't  I,"  said  Craw- 
shay, slipping  cheerfully  into  the  highly  spiced 
negative  vernacular. 

"  No,  not  never! "  added  Mrs.  Tombs  in  rapture. 

Clo  was  talking  to  Dorcas  Deane  and  did  not 
hear  her  two  adorers'  prolonged  paean. 

"  She  was  always  a  young  person  as  had  points," 
went  on  Mrs.  Tombs,  "but  now  she  's — she  's — 
well,  she  ain't  a  '  person '  at  all! " 

"No,  I  shouldn't  call  her  a  'person,'"  said 
Crawshay,  looking  again  at  the  vision;  "that 
does  n't  seem  to  describe  her,  eh?" 

"  No,  not  it,"  said  Mrs.  Tombs,  "  she  's  a  real 
lady  now — and  more  'n  that.  She  's  more  than 
brass-plate  person  either.  She  's  got  the  stamp 
of  the  Real  High  Family." 

Crawshay  folded  his  arms  and  looked  profound. 

"  Why,  yes,"  he  said, "  that 's  about  it.  You  Ve 
hit  it." 

"She  's,  she  's,"  said  Mrs.  Tombs,  becoming  in- 


Saints  in  Society  249 

spired  to  growing  oracular,  "  she  's  of  the  Front 
Rank  Proper." 

"  That  's  it,"  said  Crawshay,  slapping  his  knee. 
"  Sounds  heraldic.  Do  you  know  any  one  in  the 
Heralds?" 

"Do  I?"  said  Mrs.  Tombs.  "No,  sir— not  as 
I  suppose  what  you  mean,  though  I  had  a  musical 
box  brought  me  by  the  late  Mr.  Tombs  when  I  was 
first  married  as  could  play  Hark  the  Herald  Angels 
Sing  beautiful  and  had  a  picture  of  the  Crystal 
Palace  on  the  lid — but  it  was  stole  by  a  friend. 
Leastways,  he  wasn't  no  friend,  though  he  did 
come  in  to  supper  every  night  for  two  months  and 
talk  moral.  But  the  Herald  Angels  will  be  what 
you  're  meanin'?" 

"  No,"  said  Crawshay,  thoughfully,  "  I  should  n't 
call  them  angels,  and  they  can't  sing.  You 
would  n  't  think  so  if  you  'd  heard  them  proclaim 
the  King  off  the  top  of  St.  James's  Palace." 

"There  now, "  said  Mrs.  Tombs,  agreeably.  But 
she  closed  the  conversation,  feeling  suspicious  of 
something  faintly  unorthodox  in  this  view  of 
angels,  and  dimly  conscious  that  this  "  Duke  "  was 
a  little  wanting  in  reverence,  or  else  painfully 
misinformed — either  a  very  sad  state  of  mind  for 
one  so  gallant. 


250  Saints  in  Society 

At  this  juncture  Lady  Listower's  carriage  was 
announced,  and  Clo  kissed  her  old  friends  again, 
promising  to  come  and  see  them  on  the  morrow 
and  tell  them  all  about  it. 

Mrs.  Deane  withheld  the  too  ecstatic  Mrs. 
Tombs  from  crushing  Clo's  splendour  in  a  warm 
embrace,  rather  crumby  and  somewhat  sticky: 
and  the  Vision  sailed  away  from  these  dangers 
down-stairs  to  the  carriage,  escorted  by  Sir  Samuel 
and  a  troop  of  anxious  servants  half  off  their  heads 
with  anxiety  over  her  train. 

It  was  Sir  Samuel  who  saw  the  two  humble 
visitors  off  when  the  Listower  carriage  had  driven 
away,  and  instead  of  putting  them  in  the  'bus  they 
asked  for,  insisted  on  placing  them  in  a  cab  and 
settling  with  the  man  on  a  scale  to  make  him  call 
out  dramatic  if  husky  blessings  till  he  rounded 
the  corner  into  Kensington  Gore, — an  incident 
for  ever  after  to  be  added  to  Mrs.  Tombs's  collec- 
tion of  stories  of  the  "old  days"  for  the  regaling 
of  endless  tea-parties  to  come. 

The  presentation  of  Clo  was  a  string  of  triumphs. 
She  created  a  sensation  even  in  the  waiting-room, 
where  the  packed  crowd  of  fluttering  white  god- 
desses awaited  their  summons,  who  were  all,  until 
then,  insttinctvely  thinking  solely  and  wholly 


Saints  in  Society  251 

about  themselves  and  the  impression  they  would 
make.  Lady  Listower,  even  in  this  crush,  saw 
some  friends  to  whom  she  waved  and  gesticulated 
but  could  not  reach,  all  being  rooted  to  the  spot 
they  stood  on  by  their  trains. 

"That  girl"  of  Anne  Cartney  was  pointed  out 
to  Clo  with  much  scorn,  standing  by  the  re- 
doubtable Julia,  Marchioness  of  Mount  Amor, — a 
little  sad-eyed,  rather  shocked-looking  person,  for 
whom  Clo  felt  a  genuine  kindly  pity,  but  at  whom 
Lady  Listower,  seeing  only  the  hated  mother  in 
the  plain  child,  snorted  openly. 

Then  their  turn  came.  Clo  remembered  Lord 
Listower's  advice  but  could  not  get  on  with  it. 
As  she  sailed  along  between  the  lines  of  coloured 
uniforms  towards  the  Throne  Room  she  forgot 
herself  altogether,  remembering  only  that  she  was 
going  to  see  the  Queen  and  that  her  husband  had 
not  seen  her  off  or  even  wished  her  good  luck. 
Perhaps  this  is  sentimental.  After  what  she  had 
overheard  Mark  say  that  night  at  the  Prime  Min- 
ister's she  ought,  had  she  wished  to  be  thought  a 
reasonable  woman  at  all,  to  have  gone  round  telling 
it  to  every  woman  she  knew,  and  then  never  cared 
for  him  again.  But  she  was  not  good  at  tragedy. 
She  was  genuinely  sorry  Mark  had  not  seen  her. 


252  Saints  in  Society 

She  wanted  to  please  him — it  was  strange  he  had 
not  wanted  to  look  at  her — one  look.  Then  into 
her  simple  mind  came  the  thought,  "  But  I 
must  n't  look  depressed  or  I  shall  not  do  him  jus- 
tice now."  Her  features  unconsciously  bright- 
ened at  the  unselfish  thought,  and  when  she 
reached  the  royal  group  a  glow  of  sweetness 
rested  upon  them,  giving  her  beauty  a  finish 
nothing  else  could  have  produced.  Every  eye 
was  upon  her,  though  she  did  not  know  it — she 
was  only  thinking  now  of  the  Queen. 

The  Prince,  it  was  heard  afterwards,  remarked 
her  resemblance  to  Elizabeth  of  Austria,  and  a 
great  duchess  pronounced  her  by  far  the  most 
beautiful  woman  present,  or  indeed  in  London. 
The  Austrian  Ambassador  asked  people  leading 
questions  about  her,  and  wildly  sought  her  origin, 
himself  irfatuated.  She  came  away,  leaving  a 
sort  of  emotional  hush  after  her  like  a  trail  of 
glory,  even  in  that  high  place. 

When  they  bundled  themselves,  trains  and  all, 
into  the  carriage  and  came  away,  Lady  Listower 
was  in  quite  gay  spirits. 

"Splendid,  my  good  child,  splendid!"  she  said. 
"  I  always  said  you  were  an  original  soul.  To- 
night you  surpassed  yourself.  Poor  Julia!" 


Saints  in  Society  253 

When  she  got  to  Queen's  Gate,  Mark  was  in  his 
study  waiting  for  her,  as  usual  writing  those  inter- 
minable letters.  There  was  a  whisky-and-soda 
at  his  side.  He  looked  flushed. 

When  she  came  in  he  looked  up  hardly  a.  id  un- 
smilingly,  but  the  vision  perhaps  took  him  by 
surprise,  for  his  face  relaxed  and  he  wheeled 
round  his  swivel  chair  to  get  a  better  view. 

"By  Gad!  you're  stunning,  Clo,"  he  said. 
Here  was  a  reward  at  last. 

She  came  over  impulsively  and  kissed  him. 
Somehow  he  drew  away.  It  was  long  since 
they  had  done  such  childish  things  as  that. 

"Stand  back  and  let  me  look  at  you,"  he  said 
in  his  masterful  way,  and  rising  himself  to  see 
her  better. 

"Do  you  like  it?"  she  asked,  pleased.  He 
asked  her  all  about  her  experiences.  He  ordered 
refreshment  for  her.  He  was  quite  assiduous 
and  very  kind.  But  he  had  drawn  away  from 
her  kiss. 

'You've  really  done  me  justice  this    time," 
he  said  with  great  blandness. 

"  I  hope  I  shall  always,"  said  this  meek  woman, 
just  a  little  wistfully. 

"Yes — ah,"  he  paused,  "but  there  was  some- 


254  Saints  in  Society 

thing  which  annoyed  me  to-day.  Whoever  asked 
those  two  awful  women  here  to-night?  I  declare 
when  I  got  into  the  drawing-room  and  saw 
them,  I—," 

"Awful  women?"  said  Clo.  "Mrs.  Tombs, 
poor  old  soul,  and  Mrs.  Deane?  Oh,  Mark, 
you  can't  call  dear  Dorcas  'awful.'  Why,  she 
is  your  old  friend.  And  look  how  devoted  she  is  to 
you  and  to  your  interests — and  to  the  children." 

"That  is  not  the  point.  Who  asked  them? 
Did  you?" 

"Of  course  I  did,  dear.  It  was  such  a  pleas- 
ure to  them  to  come  and  see  me.  They  were 
so  kind  about  it,  too." 

"Kind?  My  good  girl,  when  will  you  learn 
who's  who  and  what's  what?  Kind?  Slum 
people?  What  have  you  to  do  with  their  kind- 
ness?" She  looked  so  amazed  and  hurt  that 
he  added:  "Of  cojurse  they  mean  well.  Mrs. 
Deane  is  a  most  pserectable  person.  I  always 
did  admire  her  character  immensely,  but  you 
know,  dear,  it  gives  me  away  when  you  treat 
such  people  as  friends.  It  lowers  me.  Do  re- 
member that.  And  Crawshay  saw  them — there  's 
the  worst  thing.  The  servants  seeing  them 
was  bad  enough — but  Crawshay  ! " 


Saints  in  Society  255 

"Crawshay  saw  you,  Mark,  when  you  had  only 
one  pair  of  boots,  and  me  when  I  did  the  washing 
at  home,  and  when  Dorcas  was  my  lodger." 

"Clo,"  he  answered,  "you  are  positively  low 
in  your  tastes  and  speech.  I  must  say  it.  Lady 
Vera  says  women  always  do  cling  much  more 
obstinately  to  a  vulgar  past  than  men,  and " 

"Lady  Vera?"  said  Clo,  her  face  flushing  in 
a  steady  flow  down  to  her  neck  till  she  was  hot 
all  over,  "did  she  say  that  of  me,  Mark?" 

"  I  can't  say  just  now  quite  who  she  said  it 
about,"  he  answered,  dropping  his  eyes  and  play- 
ing with  a  silver  paper-knife  in  assumed  careless- 
ness; "she  certainly  said  it.  But  one  thing 
I  must  have — you  must  give  up  these  people, 
Clo.  You  must  not  go  to  them  again." 

Clo  stood  up  very  still  and  tall  and  white. 

"Mark,"  she  said,  "I  will  not  give  them  up. 
They  need  not  come  here,  but  I  shall  go  to  see 
them.  I  cannot  obey  you  in  this." 

"You  have  forgotten  yourself,"  he  said  angrily, 
rising. 

"No,"  she  answered  quietly  and  sadly,  "it 
is  you  who  have  forgotten." 


CHAPTER  XVI 

I N  a  gay  garden,  radiant  with  summer  flowers — 
*  streaks  of  flame-red  geraniums  broken  by  gleam- 
ing white  terraces,  and  long  shades  of  sable  yew — 
walked  Vera,  romantically  dreaming.  She  was 
all  in  diaphanous  creamy  white,  with  a  large  soft 
sash  or  scarf  of  saffron  yellow,  a  tan  haymak- 
er's hat  decorated  with  field  buttercups.  She  was 
the  picture  of  musing  maidenhood — the  distance, 
say,  of  a  terrace  away — and  appeared  to  have 
walked  out  of  a  Reynolds,  until  you  got  near 
enough  to  see  that  her  hair  was  not  her  own 
and  that  her  eyebrows  were  uncomfortably 
murky.  Also  that  her  pensive  lips  were  car- 
mined.  Still,  this  quiet  musing  in  the  dusky 
shade  of  dark  clipped  firs  and  cloistered  alleys 
of  velvet  yews  had  a  most  dreamy  and  beautiful 
effect,  and  overcame  entirely  an  initial  tendency 
in  the  beholder  to  remember  that  the  lady  was 
only  just  down  from  her  breakfast  (it  was 

12.30),  so  Arcadian  she  looked  and  such  a  wonder- 

256 


Saints  in  Society  257 

ful  "up  with  the  lark"  way  she  had  of  holding 
her  hat  by  its  strings. 

Followed  by  two  dogs  with  no  apparent  fur 
on  them,  and  not  unlike  rats,  to  which  creatures 
she  occasionally  chirped  hopeless  nonsense  in 
a  thin,  high  voice,  she  met  two  women — fellow- 
guests  at  this  refreshing  Sussex  retreat.  To 
these  she  was  jerkily  vivacious  with  abstracted 
eyes,  gushing  between  them  and  the  dogs,  and 
half  closing  her  heavy  eyelids  with  a  smiling 
boredom  patent  to  her  two  acquaintances,  who 
were  both  busy  studying  her  with  that  hideous 
frankness  that  has  made  so  many  social  meet- 
ings a  kind  of  vulgar  market,  wherein  certain 
mutual  advantages  or  disadvantages  are  openly 
appraised. 

One  of  these  ladies,  in  a  frightful  toque  which, 
with  her  frightfully-dressed  hair,  she  took  to 
signify  extreme  moral  elevation,  looked  upon 
Vera  with  a  really  nasty  smile,  which  gave  her 
the  excuse  of  appearing  sociable  the  while  she 
studied  that  lady's  tout  ensemble.  The  other, 
herself  more  clearly  designed  for  general  fas- 
cination, and  succeeding  not  ill  in  that  quite 
reasonable  end,  chatted  to  Vera  with  a  certain 
gaiety  and  good-humour,  recognising  between 

17 


258  Saints  in  Society 

them  a  vague  mutual  kinship.  But  Vera 
remained  amiably  remote,  and  the  two  passed 
on  to  tear  her  to  pieces  for  the  next  quarter  of 
an  hour,  and  outvie  one  another  in  insidious 
attacks  on  her  character,  her  complexion,  her 
dress  and  her  age;  and  to  each  hint  with  clever- 
ness that  her  hair  was  dyed,  yet  hint  yet  more 
strongly  that  the  other  would  have  hair  that 
colour  if  she  could. 

But  Vera,  with  a  shrug,  sailed  on.  And 
when  in  the  distance  she  saw,  as  she  seemed  to 
expect,  a  tall  manly  figure  approaching  along 
one  of  the  yew  paths,  she  turned  very  grace- 
fully to  a  rose-tree  at  her  side  and  proceeded 
to  reach  up  a  thin  if  white  arm  to  gather  a 
Gloire  de  Dijon  that  nodded  against  the  blue. 
Her  billowy  cream  dress,  her  slender  form,  her 
brown  hair  in  n£glig£,  a  little  more  Titian  red  in 
tint  than  formerly,  a  little  foot  put  out,  she  made  a 
charming  study  against  the  dark  yews,  a  study  to 
utterly  melt  the  heart  of  a  society  photographer. 

The  approaching  man  came  to  the  rescue. 
It  was  Stillingfleet,  who  was  staying  at  this 
week-end  gathering  of  bridge  players  with  Lord 
Henry.  The  rose  was  quickly  gathered  by 
this  gentleman,  who  deftly  kissed  it,  or  rather 


Saints  in  Society  259 

touched  it  against  his  long  curly  moustache, 
and  placed  it  in  Vera's  hand  with  a  bow.  Any- 
thing more  like  a  shop- walker  it  is  hard  to 
imagine.  But  this  effect  was  lost  on  Vera, 
usually  the  most  cruelly,  coldly  critical  of  mortals ; 
and  only  the  flattery  of  this  ready  entering 
into  her  own  pose  struck  her,  happily  for  Stilling- 
fleet.  She  thanked  him  in  a  sweet,  soft  way, 
and  put  the  rose  in  her  dress,  where  it  really 
looked  very  charming.  They  walked  along  the 
subdued  path  together. 

"Ah,"  she  said,  sighing  a  little,  "I  have  been 
dreaming  of  many  things.  Life — life! — what  a 
thing  it  is!" 

"Ah,    yes,"  answered   he,  "what  an  enigma." 

She  sighed  again  and  looked  yearning.  "We 
seek  to  fly  so  high,  and  so  often  fall  and  drag 
our  wings  in  the  dust,"  she  continued;  "a 
morning  like  this,  so  fresh,  so  innocent,  so  prime- 
val, makes  me  think,"  she  said  deeply.  "I 
long  for  what  I  know  not.  How  hollow  things 
are,  Mr.  Stillingfleet." 

It  was  12.45  and  ner  companion  was  wishing 
for  his  lunch,  so  he  agreed  with  this  quite  spon- 
taneously. 

"Ah,  yes,"  he  replied,  "The  little  more  how 


260  Saints  in  Society 

much  it  is.  A  sigh  too  short  and  a  kiss  too 
long-  -" 

"At  length  it  ringeth  to  evensong,"  she  mis- 
quoted dreamily,  happily  unconscious  that  she 
was  making  a  wild  mistake,  and  oblivious  of  the 
fact  that  a  kiss  lasting  till  evensong  would  really 
and  truly  come  under  the  heading  of  too  much 
of  the  "little  more." 

Stillingfleet,  equally  too  busy  with  his  own 
pose  (he  had  been  aesthetic  in  the  'Eighties  at  a 
time  when  that  hydrophobia  had  attacked  the 
suburbs,  and  he  could  still  call  up  many  dark 
and  drear  hints  as  to  a  misunderstood  soul 
when  occasion  really  required),  did  not  notice 
the  misquotation  either.  He  only  reflected  that 
they  were  getting  on  famously  and  proceeded 
to  rack  his  brains  for  something  neat  and  de- 
pressing from  Omar  Khayyam  with  which  to 
continue  the  conversation.  Failing  dismally  to 
do  this — the  life  of  a  political  agent  and  secre- 
tary is  not  strewn  with  the  fairest  flowers  of 
quotation — he  sighed  deeply  instead. 

"So  sad?"  said  Vera,  whose  head  had  been 
perched  on  one  side  like  a  bird's  for  some  min- 
utes while  her  eyes  were  veiled  by  her  long  lashes, 
as  she  had  read  was  very  effective  in  the  liter- 


Saints  in  Society  261 

ature  she  patronised.  She  now  raised  the  lashes 
and  let  her  large  eyes  rest  full,  if  inanely,  on 
Stillingfleet's. 

But  he  was  pulling  his  moustache  with  great 
care,  and  was  so  busy  trying  to  think  of  what 
she  would  expect  him  to  say,  that  he  forgot 
what  she  would  expect  him  to  look.  Therefore 
it  was  an  abstracted  glance  which  met  hers,  for 
the  soul  of  the  poor  wretch  was  away  in  a  subur- 
ban back  garden  in  the  'Eighties  and  he  was 
delving  in  his  dusty  mind  after  some  fragments  of 
the  Rubaiyat  that  would  get  mixed  up  with  "  I 
never  loved  a  dear  gazelle"  and  "willow  willow 
wally  " ;  in  a  floating  vision  of  a  lawn  and  four  or 
five  large  sunflowers  and  clothes  hung  out  to  dry. 

At  this  apparent  inattention  Vera  turned  and 
tossed  and  pouted,  and  hurried  her  steps  a  little. 
This  trick  also  always  had  done  good  business  on 
the  stage  so  far  as  she  could  see.  It  ought  to  do 
it  now.  Pettishness  is  so  fascinating. 

"Why  are  you  so  cruel?"  said  Stillingfleet, 
who  didn't  really  want  to  know,  but  had  to  say 
something.  He  was  positively  hungry — surely 
it  was  lunch-time?  Lady  Vera  was  sometimes 
inconsiderate. 

"Cruel?"  she  said,  raising  her  eyebrows  coldly; 


262  Saints  in  Society 

she  had  suddenly  decided  to  be  Lady  Clara  Vere  de 
Vere,  a  role  she  was  always  rather  fond  of  assum- 
ing— hence  her  flirtations  with  her  obvious  in- 
feriors, her  intention  being  to  have  them  all 
dying  of  love  for  her  yet  scorned.  Also,  as  she 
had  only  just  had  breakfast,  Stillingfleet's  dream 
of  lunch  did  not  come  nigh  her. 

"Yes,"  said  he,  getting  a  little  desperate  and 
measuring  the  paces  between  their  position  and 
the  house  with  his  eye  half-unconsciously,  to 
see  how  much  more  semi-lovemaking  would 
be  expected  of  him  before  he  could  escape  in 
to  lunch,  "cruel.  Why  do  you  get  yourself  so 
talked  about  with  Hading?  You  do,  you  know. 
What  do  you  see  in  him?" 

This  was  really  spiteful.  It  came  straight 
from  a  primeval  source — namely,  the  simple 
rancour  of  man  baulked  of  his  dinner.  But  Vera 
took  it  for  a  furious  and  seething  jealousy,  long 
hidden,  but  now  surging  forth  in  a  fearsome 
torrent.  Instantly  she  was  much  more  Lady 
Clara  Vere  de  Vere,  with  the  air  of  the  very  most 
bored  of  bored  "Gibson"  girls.  Her  chin  went 
up  and  her  heavy  eyelids  fell  (in  books  this  pose 
is  said  to  be  "tantalising").  Stillingfleet  must 
have  really  found  it  so,  though  perhaps  in  the 


Saints  in  Society  263 

wrong  sense,  for  he  said,  quite  curtly  and  rudely, — 

"I  suppose  he's  coming  down  here  to-day? 
You  should  know." 

"He  is,"  she  answered,  with  the  goddess  look 
she  admired  so  much.  "  He  is  like  all  the  others. 
They  are  all  the  same,  poor  fools!" 

She  took  a  note  from  her  dress  and  waved  it 
carelessly.  It  was  in  Hading's  handwriting. 
This  was  dramatic. 

But  Stillingfleet  looked  nasty.  So  long  as  he 
was  the  honoured  one,  singled  out  by  Lord 
Henry's  sister  for  undue  notice,  and  feeling  the 
thrill  of  perilous  intrigue  adding  its  weight  to 
his  already  solid  conviction  of  his  own  tailor's 
dummy  fascinations,  all  was  well.  But  the  idea 
of  sharing  this  post  with  Hading,  who  was  quite 
without  his  own  dreamy,  wax-doll  graces,  who 
wore  no  waving  moustache  and  had  n't  "killing" 
eyes,  only  hard  ones ;  who  could  not  waltz  di- 
vinely and  who  talked  overmuch  and  who  bragged 
about  talents  that  unfortunately  he  really  pos- 
sessed, was  most  repugnant  to  him.  Nearly  as 
repugnant  as  being  expected  to  flirt  in  a  hot  sun, 
amongst  geraniums  and  calceolarias,  and  beastly 
little  dogs,  when  you  were  desperately  hungry 
and  lunch  was  waiting.  So  he  did  a  very  ordinary 


264  Saints  in  Society 

trick  of  simple  masculinity.  He  suddenly  wanted 
to  kill  something.  He  picked  up  a  stone  and 
threw  it  viciously  at  some  bushes  on  a  flower-bed, 
where  he  saw  some  small  creature  moving.  A 
yelp  was  the  result,  followed  by  a  scream  from 
Vera.  The  moving  object  was  one  of  the  rat- 
like  dogs.  The  yelp  swelled  out  into  a  series  of 
howls  and  bellows,  so  that  several  servants,  the 
host,  and  some  of  the  party  came  upon  the  scene, 
to  behold  the  tragic  sight  of  Vera  embracing  her 
little  animal,  which  was  not  at  all  hurt,  and  Still- 
ingfleet,  in  agonies  of  professed  remorse  but  secret 
temper,  trying  to  get  out  of  the  m$Ue  without 
swearing  audibly.  It  is  unwise  to  try  to  flirt 
before  lunch. 

But  if  Vera's  curtain-raiser  was  a  failure,  her 
after  sally  was  a  coup-de-main.  Later  in  the  after- 
noon, when  most  of  the  party  were  at  golf  and 
some  asleep,  Mark  Hading  arrived.  He  was  alone. 
He  was  also  much  preoccupied,  and  looked 
distinctly  cross  and  ill-humoured  as  he  entered 
the  cool  hall  from  the  blaze  of  heat  without. 

His  hostess,  Mrs.  "Pan"  Vannerheim — his 
host  was  a  painfully  dull  millionaire  with  a  pretty 
and  gay  wife — had  left  a  message  for  him,  should 
he  arrive  in  her  absence,  that  Lady  Vera  was  to 


Saints  in  Society  265 

be  counted  her  substitute.  He  had  not  an- 
nounced the  time  of  his  arrival,  and  in  any  case 
the  house  was  proud  of  its  "Liberty  Hall" 
character. 

When  he  came  in,  then,  from  the  white  blaze 
of  the  afternoon  sun  he  found  the  wide  hall  a 
bower  of  green  stillness,  and  in  it  but  one  occu- 
pant— Vera,  in  a  soft  robe  of  pearl  grey,  reading  a 
book  bound  with  gold -stamped  leather. 

This  quite  cloisteral  vision — Vera  had  on  a 
plain  muslin  collar  like  a  widow's,  and  wore  her 
hair  severely — had  the  effect  of  suddenly  sooth- 
ing his  nerves.  She  greeted  him  quietly,  with  a 
cool,  if  long,  pressure  of  the  hand,  ordered  a  few 
things  from  the  waiting  servants  in  a  quiet  voice, 
the  voice  of  a  dreaming  abbess,  saw  to  his  wants, 
provided  for  his  comfort,  and  remained,  what  so 
few  women  could  remain  under  the  circumstances, 
deliciously  subdued,  and  gentle,  and  remote. 
Hading  hated  fussiness,  and  just  now,  when  he 
was  hot  and  dusty,  he  would  have  shown  temper 
at  it.  But  Vera  was  so  soothing.  When  he 
went  to  wash  and  change  his  travel-stained 
clothes  he  reflected  upon  this — the  wonderfully 
understanding  nature  of  this  woman:  her  calm- 
ness, her  serenity,  the  comfort  she  shed  with  her. 


266  Saints  in  Society 

It  was  significant  of  his  ideals  that  he  had  once 
felt  the  same  thing  about  the  Mission  woman, 
Dorcas  Deane.  At  home  he  had  left  a  sense  of 
jar;  Clo  and  he  had  jarred  vaguely  for  months. 
His  public  life,  just  now,  was  the  same.  He  was 
done  to  death  with  deputations,  questions, 
conundrums,  angry  meetings,  and  the  insults  of 
his  ungrateful  constituents.  There  were  some 
big  practical  trade  questions  coming  along  after 
the  approaching  vacation,  and  he,  with  others, 
would  have  to  meet  them.  The  Press,  too,  was 
"roasting"  him  pretty  freely  for  his  changes  of 
front,  his  unfulfilled  promises,  the  largeness  of 
his  talk,  the  smallness  of  his  accomplishments. 
Added  to  these  joys,  conscience  and  his  liver  were 
both  also  at  work  alternately,  and  he  was  in 
something  of  the  position  of  a  man  goaded  to 
madness  by  a  swarm  of  flies  when,  on  this  blazing 
afternoon,  he  had  managed  to  tear  himself  away 
and  dash  down  to  Chassingham,  Vannerheim's 
country  seat,  for  a  few  days'  peace. 

He  came  down  to  tea  t^ie-h-tete  with  that  most 
calm  and  cool  Vera  in  a  peaceful  frame  of  mind 
for  the  first  time  for  a  fortnight,  and  feeling  a 
sense  of  great  blandness  steal  over  his  harassed 
faculties.  It  is  so  nice  to  be  understood.  It 


Saints  in  Society  267 

was  restful  in  the  shade  of  palms  and  wet  ferns 
and  the  soft  sound  of  plashing  water  to  forget  the 
piping  heat  of  the  London  pavements,  the  rush 
of  men's  angry  tongues  and  reiterated,  stupid 
questions,  and  to  remember  only  this  calm 
present  and  Vera's  tactful  eyelashes. 

Of  these  great  use  was  made.  Conversation 
was  an  airy  fantasy,  and  sweet  grave  ideas, 
skirting  round  about  his  own  life  questions,  yet 
not  too  crudely  definite,  fell  lightly  from  Vera's 
prudently  carmined  lips,  and  made  him  feel  at 
more  ease  with  himself.  She  was  reading  a 
modern  French  writer  on  Sociology,  she  said, 
and  she  just  lightly  quoted  ideas  here  and  there 
in  a  graceful,  half -idle  way  (the  ideas  were  all 
scored  underneath  in  violet  pencil  in  the  book — 
they  were  all  she  had  dreamed  of  reading  of  its 
wisdom,  by-the-bye).  All  these  quotations  had 
a  beautiful  way  of  justifying  in  poetic  language 
Mark's  own  recent  actions,  about  which  his  con- 
science had  been  so  worrying  and  about  which 
his  country  had  invented  such  gross  names. 
Absolutely  this  was  a  woman  to  help  a  man's 
ambitions  in  the  right  way.  That  was  what 
kept  crooning  to  him  like  a  delightful  under- 
song of  consciousness  all  the  time  he  listened 


268  Saints  in  Society 

to  Vera,  and  looked  at  her  sympathetic  way  of 
supporting  her  piquant  chin  on  a  long  white 
hand,  adorned  by  one  immense  sapphire,  like  a 
Cardinal's. 

Clo  could  never  be  like  this.  Clo  was  so 
literal — dear  girl;  good,  of  course,  but  so  dull,  so 
literal,  so — so  sledge-hammer-like  in  her  methods 
of  doing  right.  It  was  so  vulgar  to  be  literal. 
Clo,  in  that  way,  bore  the  taint  of  their  mutual 
small  origin:  she  would  never  lose  it.  True,  it 
gave  her  that  still,  candid  look  that  people  called 
stately,  but  it  was  boring,  really  boring,  at  home 
when  things  pressed  a  man  as  he  was  pressed  and 
worried,  as  men  in  his  position  were  bound  to 
be  worried.  You  do  not  grow  suddenly  and 
immensely  rich  for  nothing:  and  great  newspa- 
per combines  are  not  things  to  make  a  man's 
head  lie  any  easier  than  crowns,  especially  when 
conducted  in  conjunction  with  self -announced 
prophethood  and  a  fairly  recently  expressed  in- 
tention of  reforming  London.  Like  most  great 
reformers  Mark  hated  ridicule,  and  just  now  he 
was  in  the  very  centre  of  it  and  fire  of  it.  But 
here  was  a  woman  who  took  him  and  his  aims 
quite  seriously.  So,  for  that  matter,  did  his  host 
and  fellow-guests,  but  Vera  had  her  own  way  of 


Saints  in  Society  269 

showing  it.  It  was  such  a  soothing  way.  Then 
she  played  to  him  very  softly,  and  later  on,  when 
he  was  rested,  and  they  had  talked  things  over 
happily,  she  took  him  into  the  grounds,  choosing 
the  shady  paths  and  terraces  and  keeping  up  her 
flow  of  sympathy,  enhanced  by  the  halo  of  a 
fluffy  pale  pink  parasol  and  a  cloudy  chiffon  gar- 
den hat. 

Two  of  the  party  half-sleeping  on  the  lawn 
in  hammocks  looked  after  them  and  called  them 
"Una  and  the  tame  Radical,"  and  snorted  un- 
sympathisingly.  But  the  idyll  went  on,  even  to 
Vera  gathering  a  Gloire  de  Dijon  bud  for  Mark 
off  the  same  tree  from  which  Stillingfleet  had 
culled  one  for  her  an  hour  or  two  before. 

Later  on,  round  the  convivial  dinner-table — 
Mrs.  "Pan"  always  collected  cheery  guests, 
unless  they  were  lions,  to  whom  she  extended 
the  privilege  of  behaving  as  they  liked — Mark 
had  recovered  his  old  rdle  to  some  extent,  and 
proceeded  to  deliver  his  brilliant  dinner-table 
monologue  as  usual.  He  was  exceptionally 
biting  and  witty  in  his  allusions  to  several  in- 
stitutions, and  even  persons,  and  carried  away 
his  audience  in  a  torrent  of  his  incisive  words. 
Nevertheless,  there  were  some  who  looked  at 


270  Saints  in  Society 

him   queerly,    and   some   of  the   men   askance. 

If  he  saw  this,  and  sometimes  he  did,  he 
rushed  on  more  roughly  for  the  pet  corns  of  the 
Universe  in  general  and  spared  no  one  and  nothing 
in  the  stream  of  his  dogmatic  utterance.  He 
was  the  great  man,  they  must  all  keep  silent. 
They  knew  this,  but  it  did  not  delight  their  hearts, 
and  somehow  the  great  man  was  sometimes  very 
little  indeed  in  his  hasty  judgments ;  in  the  utter 
superficiality  of  his  statements,  the  sweeping 
want  not  only  of  charity  but  of  accuracy  in  his 
red-hot  condemnations.  Reforming,  as  a  busi- 
ness, may  become  a  real  bore. 

Afterwards,  when  bridge  claimed  every  other 
person  in  the  place  for  three  hours'  steady, 
eager  gamble,  Vera,  who  had  been  playing  high 
stakes  for  a  week,  withdrew  herself  from  the 
feverish  throng  and  glided  to  a  place  within 
Mark's  vision — he  was  still  blustering  to  Lord 
Henry  and  a  friend — and  stood  and  looked 
thoughtful  near  a  clump  of  Madonna  lilies  and 
some  rare  books  on  a  table  over  by  one  of  the 
wide  windows.  Outside  a  June  moon  was  shin- 
ing calmly.  Whereupon  Mark  went  to  her  and 
devoted  to  her  the  whole  of  the  evening,  staying 
deep  in  conversation  even  when  the  winners 


Saints  in  Society  271 

and  losers,  with  tired  eyes,  began  to  make  for  bed. 

On  the  staircase,  near  the  door  of  her  room, 
the  hostess,  the  gay  Mrs.  "Pan,"  stood  a  second 
chatting  to  a  woman  friend  before  retiring.  The 
millionaire's  wife  was  a  little  woman  with  a  charm- 
ing turn-up  nose  and  Irish  eyes,  and  celebrated 
feet,  slang,  and  furs. 

"What  is  that  old  Vera  Vade  doing  now?" 
said  the  friend,  a  matron  twice  Vera's  age  but 
content  to  call  her  old  because  she  was  not 
married,  after  the  feminine  custom. 

"Oh,  that!"  said  Mrs.  "Pan,"  "that 'snot 
new.  She  loves  that  horrid  bearish  creature 
to  dangle  after  her.  She  made  me  ask  him.  I 
hate  him  myself." 

"But  what  will  it  lead  to?"  persisted  the 
friend.  "  What  do  you  foresee? " 

"Muddles." 

"And  then?" 

"Scandals." 

"And  then?" 

"  Oh,  something  to  talk  about  at  breakfast  one 
morning  when  one  has  been  silly  enough  to  get 
up  for  it,"  said  Mrs.  "Pan,"  yawning. 

"I  thought  he  was  religious — a  fanatic,"  said 
the  matron. 


272  Saints  in  Society 

"So  he  was.  But  Vera  would  drive  that  out 
of  anybody." 

"A  tawdry  enchantress,"  said  the  friend. 

"  Very,"  said  Mrs.  Vannerheim,  "  shabby  finery. 
But  success  turned  his  head  in  the  first  place, 
and  Vera  set  it  spinning.  But  the  majority  of 
people  still  swear  by  him." 

"But  her  tricks  are  so  old — so  common,"  said 
the  matron. 

"What  will  not  risen  people  do  for  a  title?" 
said  Mrs.  Vannerheim,  who  herself  would  have 
cut  off  her  celebrated  little  nose  for  one. 

"Has  n't  he  a  beautiful  wife?"  said  the  other. 
"I  hear  she  was  raved  about  at  the  last  Court." 

"Yes— but  dull,"  said  Mrs.  "Pan."  "Slow. 
Good.  Socialist.  Works  for  the  poor.  Hor- 
ribly quiet  woman — never  has  a  word  to  say 
for  herself.  Can't  get  out  of  her  common  groove 
— she  was  somebody  in  a  slum,  you  know.  A 
regular  bore." 

"Oh,  how  dreary,"  said  the  matron.  "No 
wonder,  then,  that  he  amuses  himself.  One 
has  to." 


CHAPTER  XVII 

'T'HIS  time  the  lion  at  the  house  party  did  not 
*  merely  growl.  He  provided  an  immense 
amount  of  speculatory  gossip,  to  his  own  and 
Lady  Vera's  entire  satisfaction. 

There  are  some  people  who  will  never  dis- 
tinguish notice  from  admiration.  Sufficient  com- 
ment will  always  be  in  their  eyes  an  outward  and 
visible  sign  of  an  inward  and  entire  greatness. 
Perhaps,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  it  is  a  happy 
thing. 

But  Mark  and  Lady  Vera,  conducting  a  blatant 
form  of  intellectual  and  semi-spiritual  flirtation 
in  the  very  midst  of  a  little  coterie  of  busy  gos- 
sipers,  had  a  glory  less  innocuous,  if  more  definite, 
in  its  manifestations.  For  the  succeeding  two 
or  three  days,  wherever  this  pair  moved  or  talked 
eager  eyes  followed  them,  and  eager  tongues  dis- 
cussed their  infinite  possibilities. 

They  were  as  well  aware  of  this  as  were  the 
gossipers  themselves,  but  they  were  both  perfectly 

18  273 


274  Saints  in  Society 

convinced  of  the  flattery  involved  in  such 
preternatural  notice  and  comment.  They  were 
both  supremely  confident  that  it  was  the  natural 
tribute  of  greatness.  Mark  surmised  it  to  be 
the  result  of  his  own  tremendous  name:  Vera, 
the  result  of  her  transcendent  fascination.  Of 
course  they  were  both  too  absorbed  to  overhear 
the  actual  remarks  of  their  fellow-guests,  but 
even  if  they  had  they  would  have  put  these 
down  to  jealousy. 

There  was  nothing  so  delightful  to  Vera  as 
that  sense  of  creating  an  occasion,  a  scene,  a 
melodrama  in  the  very  midst  of  ordinary  sur- 
roundings and  people.  She  gathered  great  rapt- 
ure from  the  performance  of  deep  and  significant 
glances,  meaning  tones,  cryptic  sentences,  and 
small  signals,  even  where  the  recipient  of  such 
attentions  was  on  the  whole  rather  puzzled  by 
them,  as  some  of  her  obtuse  admirers  were. 

But  when  the  other  party  to  the  drama  took 
the  thing  seriously,  and  gave  signs  of  develop- 
ing a  vast  array  of  dark  sayings  and  signals 
himself  on  his  own  account,  the  lady  was  happy 
indeed. 

To  the  raw,  solid,  literal  mind  of  Mark,  the 
mind  of  a  businesslike  working  -  man,  unused 


Saints  in  Society  275 

entirely  to  subtleties  of  any  sort,  the  half-veiled 
meaning  to  be  found  in  all  Vera's  sayings  and 
actions  had  #  tremendous  fascination.  It  struck 
him  as  so  brilliant,  so  marvellous,  and  yet  so 
sympathetic,  and  he  bowed  to  the  spell  of  its 
enchantment  as  he  was  meant  to  do,  feeling  all 
the  time  that  he  was  being  most  discerning  and 
original  in  doing  so.  He  felt,  with  pride,  that  he 
had  discovered  Lady  Vera.  Until  he  came,  he 
said  to  himself,  there  had  been  no  one  to  appreci- 
ate "that  woman"  at  her  true  worth.  He  did; 
she  was  worthy  of  him. 

There  is  a  certain  trait  so  peculiar  to  un- 
convertible middle-classism  that  it  stamps  the 
scions  of  that  great  bulwark  of  the  British  Em- 
pire as  indelibly  as  an  ink-stamp  on  a  receipted 
bill.  And  that  is  the  absolute  incapacity  to  . 
realise  that  any  one  can  possibly  say  what  he 
does  not  mean,  or  be  what  he  does  not  profess 
to  be.  Again  and  again  it  is  the  unfortunate 
experience  of  the  witty,  and  even  of  the  wise,  to 
be  taken  absolutely  and  literally,  word  for  word, 
without  benefit  of  clergy  in  the  shape  of  extenu- 
ating circumstances,  passing  emotion,  or  any 
other  quite  reasonable  ground  for  having  said 
a  certain  thing.  Mark  Hading  was,  of  course, 


276  Saints  in  Society 

of  that  class  in  which  an  utterance  is  taken 
strictly  and  on  its  entirety  upon  all  occasions. 
His  having  risen  in  the  world  enough  to  mix 
with  a  class  in  whose  lips  words  are  bandied 
about  so  gracefully  as  to  intentionally  obscure 
one  meaning  to  reveal  another  had  in  nowise 
cured  him  of  this  stolid  attitude  of  mind.  Like 
most  clever  persons  who  have  "got  on"  in  all 
respects  save  this  one,  he  took  his  very  inability 
to  understand  the  witty  banter  and  chatter  of 
the  world  in  which  he  found  himself  for  virtue 
and  strength  of  character.  He  raised  his  fine 
head  proudly  when  a  dinner-table  conversation 
sparkled  and  glittered  above  his  understanding. 
Did  it  not  show  his  superior  virtue,  his  natural 
seriousness  of  purpose,  his  sterner  mould?  Folly 
he  called  it,  the  folly  of  the  worldly  and  brainless. 
He  was  doing  something  in  the  world,  something 
strong  and  noisy  and  large.  These  brainless 
chatterers  with  their  frivolous  remarks,  their 
words  tossed  lightly  about  from  lip  to  lip  across 
the  table,  to  and  fro  and  back  again  like  tennis 
balls,  were  the  wasters  of  life,  its  froth,  its  foam, 
they  were  not  to  be  considered.  The  fact  that 
some  of  them  owned  broad  acres  and  ruled  them 
faultlessly  and  finely  did  not  come  into  Mark's 


Saints  in  Society  277 

philosophy  at  all.  What  was  the  good  of  doing 
great  things  if  you  did  not  talk  about  it?  That 

+• 

silver-haired  and  foppish  old  baronet,  his  vis-h- 
vis  at  table,  who  owned  immense  and  poverty- 
stricken  lands,  and  half -supported  dozens  of 
wretched  families  out  of  his  own  lean  purse, 
without  saying  a  word  about  it  one  way  or 
another,  was  that  a  man  to  be  regarded  as  great 
or  glorious?  That  was  not  Mark's  idea.  A 
great  man  had  the  eyes  of  England  upon  him; 
otherwise  he  was  not  great.  He  snorted  at  the 
very  idea.  Reformers  often  snort.  Also,  usu- 
ally, they  eat  very  fast,  or  else  they  want  special 
food  at  a  dinner-party,  such  as  haricot  beans, 
or  hominy,  or  tiresome  things  in  medical-looking 
utensils.  Mark  demanded  peculiar  mineral  waters 
in  odd-shaped  glasses,  and  talked  loudly  about 
what  "we"  are  doing  for  Imperialism  across 
the  table  at  the  host  before  the  women  had  left 
the  room. 

The  women  who  did  not  look  wistful  or  bored 
looked  defiant.  Only  Vera's  speaking  eyes  glowed 
the  intense  rapture  of  an  earnest-minded  woman 
feeling  herself  in  the  very  whirl  of  the  creation 
of  empires,  and  so  on.  She  did  it  with  a  fore- 
finger, decorated  by  a  ring,  supporting  the 


278  Saints  in  Society 

middle  of  her  cheek.  It  was  what  she  would 
have  mystically  called  an  "understanding"  look. 
Mark  felt  it,  rather  than  saw  it,  and  shouted  on 
at  'his  noisy  propaganda,  supported  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  "that  woman's"  silent  sympathy 
and  appreciation. 

A  very  public  flirtation  on  this  system  was 
not  without  its  piquancy  to  the  odd  crew  of 
somewhat  vulgarly  curious  guests  that  the  Van- 
nerheims  had  got  together.  Every  day  its 
manifestations  were  intensified  and  the  audience 
applauded. 

"What  is  that  woman  doing?"  said  one  femi- 
nine guest  to  another. 

"My  dear,  ruling  empires  by  tying  a  horrid 
political  bear  to  her  apron-string.  I  hope  she 
likes  him.  I  hate  the  square  ends  of  his  fingers." 
"I  hate  his  noble  outlook  on  life,"  said  the 
other.  "  It  slops  the  soup  so.  You  should  n't 
eat  soup  and  rave  about  your  mission.  I  wish 
he  would  go.  He  talks  like  a  mixture  of  a 
copy-book  and  an  angry  cabman.  I  suppose 
that  is  political  reform." 

"Oh,  he  's  all  right,"  put  in  Mrs.  "Pan,"  cheer- 
fully; "he  's  got  lots  of  money,  and  he  can  do 
anything,  pretty  nearly,  with  these  papers  of 


Saints  in  Society  279 

his.  I  hate  him,  of  course,  but  you  can't  judge 
your  friends  by  that.  That 's  nothing.  He  's  rich 
and  he  's  got  influence.  Besides,  he  's  funny." 

"  He  has  n't  got  the  dimmest  sense  of  humour," 
said  the  first  speaker. 

"  No.  That  is  why  he  does  n't  love  his  wife 
— she  has  n't"  said  another. 

"Did  he  say  that?"  asked  Mrs.  "Pan." 

"He  told  Vera  Vade,  and  she  told  me,"  said 
the  first  speaker. 

"  Probably  she  invented  it,"  said  Mrs.  "Pan," 
sagely.  "The  fact  is,  he  is  sick  of  his  wife 
because  she  is  nobody.  That 's  all.  He  thinks 
poor  old  Vera  is  somebody.  I  don't  know  why 
he  makes  such  a  parade  of  it,  anyhow.  His  wife 
never  bothers  him."  She  tilted  up  and  ex- 
amined her  celebrated  little  foot  thoughtfully. 

"  No,  she  is  much  too  occupied  with  her  children 
and  her  Crawshays,"  said  the  other,  spitefully. 
"How  that  man  can  dance  attendance  on  her 
and  her  deadly  charities  I  don't  know.  Not  that 
one  knows  her,  really,  only  one  hears  of  her 
through  her  looks.  She  is  pretty  in  a  dull, 
stately,  solemn  style,  the  kind  of  common  queenly 
style  that  one  associates  with  shop-girls  and 
young  persons  at  photographers  '.  She  is  n't  a  bit 


280  Saints  in  Society 

interesting,  and  has  no  'manner.'  Crawshay  is 
carrying  his  socialist  pose  a  little  too  far,  but  I 
suppose  he  likes  the  romantic  post  of  squire-in- 
waiting  to  such  a  pious  stick.  Fat  men  are 
always  sentimental." 

"Why,  what  does  he  do?"  asked  Mrs.  "Pan," 
alert  at  once.  "Is  he  often  there? " 

"Oh,  well,  he  is  interested  in  her  charities 
and  all  that,"  said  the  other.  "That's  what 
they  call  it,  you  know.  But  a  woman  whose 
husband  leaves  her  alone  so  much  and  so  long 
must  have  her  special  friend.  Don't  you  agree, 
dear?"  she  said,  addressing  the  third  member 
of  the  group. 

" Goodness  gracious! "  cried  Mrs. "  Pan,"  sitting 
up  erect  and  pulling  down  her  deep  waist-belt 
at  each  side  of  her  small  waist  mechanically 
and  stroking  down  her  skirt  from  the  hips, 
"how  very  interesting  these  saints  are!  Who 
would  have  thought  of  that  deadly  Mrs.  Hading 
having  any  affairs  of  her  own?  Still  waters 
always  run  deep,  of  course,  but  I  really  should 
have  thought  that  good  lady  unimpeachable. 
She  wears  such  hideous  hats.  And  oh!  her 
American  boots ! " 

"  Well,   of  course,   they  Ve   got   on   from   no- 


Saints  in  Society  281 

thing,  and  I  suppose  that  sort  of  thing  will  out," 
said  one  of  her  guests,  pleasantly — Mrs.  "Pan's" 
father  having  been  a  Hebraic  vendor  of  old 
clothes  in  the  Mile  End  Road,  by  which  means 
he  made  his  wealth. 

"But  does  she  dress  badly?"  asked  the  other 
lady.  "  I  heard  she  appeared  in  the  most  ab- 
surdly extravagant  costumes  on  occasions,  silver 
gowns  and  so  on.  Theatrical,  I  call  it." 

"  Oh,  you  know  what  those  vulgar,  ill-balanced 
people  will  do,"  said  Mrs.  "Pan,"  the  ever-smart 
and  ever  taut.  "A  gown  fit  for  a  duchess  one 
day  and  some  old  blanket  fit  for  a  district  visitor 
the  next.  I  don't  know  why  the  Lis towers 
took  her  up,  except  as  a  boring  sort  of  curiosity, 
with  her  slow,  staring  eyes  and  her  dull  pose  of 
caring  for  slum  children.  Of  course  it  is  a  very 
respectable  pose  and  helps  her  on  with  that  silly 
old  Aunt  Sally  of  a  Lady  Highgate,  and  that  sort 
of  fogey.  All  the  most  fearful  old  frumps  in  the 
Peerage  are  her  friends  and  boon  companions — a 
perfect  crew!  I  never  see  her  with  her  horrible 
old  countesses  and  charity  committee  duchesses 
but  I  want  to  shy  cocoanuts  for  a  penny  a  shy  at 
the  whole  lot  of  them.  They  turn  up  at  the 
Opera  in  sage-green  silk  dinner-gowns  and  caps. 


282  Saints  in  Society 

One  has  an  onyx  brooch.  My  dear,  I  saw  it. 
They  are  fearfully  and  wonderfully  respectable. 
They  wear  ice-wool  shawls  over  their  heads  at 
the  play.  Such  guys  I  never  saw!"  She  laughed 
very  much  in  a  very  high  key.  The  ladies  in 
question  had  never  received  her  in  spite  of  her 
wealth  and  various  fly-away  talents.  They  were 
a  very  sore  point  indeed.  Even  Mrs.  "  Pan"  Van- 
nerheim  had  not  the  power  to  push  her  impertinent 
and  noisy  little  person  everywhere.  Her  small 
nose  with  its  sharp  retrousse  form,  like  the  bow- 
sprit of  a  ship,  had  forced  its  determined  way  into 
many  sanctuaries.  But  certain  highly  English 
grand  dames  wore  always  a  sort  of  steel-plated 
armour  against  its  encroachments.  Hence  these 
sundry  splashings. 

During  the  evening  the  voice  of  the  matron 
in  the  toque  raised  itself  to  a  pitch  exceedingly 
high  and  thin,  and  said  across  the  room,  where 
the  guests  were  playing  cards, — 

"Mr.  Hading,  how  very  unkind  of  you  not  to 
bring  your  charming  wife.  We  have  all  heard 
so  much  about  her.  Why  will  you  hide  her  from 
us  in  this  way?" 

The  question  fell  athwart  the  groups  of  busy 
bridge  players,  and  even  reached  the  distant  loo 


Saints  in  Society  283 

table,  where  a  hot  squabble  was  going  on  in 
strident  tones.  Mark  glanced  up  at  his  inter- 
locutor unpleasantly.  He  was  reading  at  a  table 
to  himself. 

"My  wife  is  very  busy,"  he  said  curtly. 

"Good  for  you,  old  man,"  said  a  grey-haired 
man  over  his  shoulder  without  troubling  to 
turn  his  eyes  from  the  eager  scanning  of  his 
own  bridge  hand.  "Wish  mine  was.  That's 
the  best  sort  of  wife  to  have — always  nicely 
occupied  in  town." 

The  weak  cynicism  had  no  personal  meaning 
whatsoever.  It  was  merely  meant  to  be  witty. 
But  the  unpleasant  matron  laughed  meaningly. 

"Oh,  dear,"  she  said,  "what  things  you  people 
say!  Do  you  allow  Mrs.  Hading  to  be  occupied, 
Mr.  Hading?  And  does  she  tell  you  all  she  does? " 

"Her  work  is  well  known,"  said  Lord  Henry 
from  his  table,  where  he  was  playing  desperately 
with  his  hostess  and  a  party.  "  It  goes  on  as 
steadily  as  the  brook.  Only  it  is  more  than 
chatter." 

"I  see  she  has  a  champion,"  went  on  the 
repellent  lady,  bristling  up  at  the  compliment 
of  having  attracted  the  rather  taciturn  Lord 
Henry's  attention.  "Of  course  I  know  how 


284  Saints  in  Society 

excellent  she  is.     I  heard  of  it  from  Lady  Vera. 
Did  n't  you  tell  me  all  about  Mrs.  Hading,  Vera? " 

Vera  looked  up  from  a  distant  piano  where 
she  was  playing  something  dreamy  and  soft  in 
the  half-lights  of  a  ferny  alcove.  There  was  a 
certain  tension  of  the  atmosphere,  perfectly  dis- 
cernible by  herself,  as  her  reply  was  awaited, 
though  not  a  single  player  glanced  up  from  his 
cards.  She  knew  the  entire  room  listened. 

"Really,"  she  said  plaintively,  "I  am  not 
the  best  authority.  You  must  ask  Sir  Samuel 
Crawshay." 

The  significance  of  her  voice  was  worse  than  the 
words. 

"But  really?"  said  the  matron.  "How  very 
interesting.  And  he  such  a  woman-hater  too. 
Isn't  he  a  woman-hater,  dear?"  (Vera  had 
angled  for  him  in  the  past,  it  was  well  known.) 
"Dear  Mr.  Hading,  how  very  charming  this 
lovely  wife  of  yours  must  be  to  attract  where 
others  fail." 

Now  Hading  was  not  in  the  habit  of  defend- 
ing his  wife,  but  he  had  got  a  dim  suspicion  that 
they  were  all  in  some  way  what  he  called  "  getting" 
at  him  by  this  semi-spiteful  banter.  He  reserved 
to  himself  the  right  to  regard  his  wife  with  con- 


Saints  in  Society  285 

tempt.  In  defence  of  his  household,  with  the 
amount  of  himself  that  it  involved,  he  could  be 
quite  as  angry  as  any  one.  He  looked  up  sternly 
and  meaningly  at  the  matron. 

"Mrs.  Hading  does  not  go  in  for — er,  pro- 
fessional charms,"  he  said  in  his  harsh,  grating 
voice.  "She  spends  her  time  more  sensibly." 

"  But  how  nice — and  how  clever  to  make 
dear  Sir  Samuel  sensible  too,"  said  the  creature. 

"Good  sense,"  remarked  Lord  Henry,  mus- 
ingly, his  eyes  on  his  cards,  "is  as  you  take  it. 
We  might  quarrel  about  a  definition,  madame, 
but  that  I  never  quarrel  with  your  most  amiable 
sex.  You  are  really  too  rocky." 

The  intervention  saved  an  angry  reply  from 
Mark  and  took  the  uncomfortable  lady  to  Lord 
Henry's  side,  where  she  elected  to  stay,  flirting 
a  fan,  having  conceived  from  his  twice  addressing 
her  that  she  had  made  a  distinct  impression  on 
him.  So  she  had.  He  would  willingly  have  seen 
her  dropped  into  the  sea  with  a  weight  round 
her  neck. 

But  Mark  got  up  and  sought  another  room, 
there  to  smoke  and  to  meditate  on  the  poisonous 
hints  the  two  women  had  dropped  into  his  too- 
ready  mind.  Absurd  as  they  were,  Vera  had 


286  Saints  in  Society 

prepared  him  for  them.  And  now  he  listened 
to  the  voice  of  the  tempter.  His  rich  friends 
did  not  always  give  him  unalloyed  joy,  though 
he  would  never  have  been  brought  to  admit  it. 
But  now  their  spite  had  suggested  a  new  thought, 
a  new  idea  to  his  feverish,  worried  brain.  It  was 
an  idea  with  possibilities.  And  he  was  not,  he 
said  to  himself,  a  man  to  flinch  at  sentimental 
obstacles.  It  was  to  be  thought  of,  at  all  events. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  next  day  Vera's  hostess  managed  to 
attach  herself  to  the  side  of  that  sylph 
before  Hading  had  the  opportunity  to  take  his 
accustomed  place.  It  was  not  an  easy  feat,  for 
Vera  had  a  way  of  being  oddly  elusive  when  she 
had  a  flirtation  in  hand,  as  regards  her  own  sex, 
and  could  usually  manage  to  drop  any  over- 
affectionate  and  adhesive  friend  like  a  hot  coal. 
But  hostesses  have  a  pull  over  one,  and  Mrs. 
" Pan"  could  stick  like  a  burr  if  she  had  anything 
to  say  or  to  find  out  from  a  victim.  She  pounced 
on  her  prey  with  a  wild  fanfare  of  gush  almost 
before  Vera  was  aware  of  her  tactics,  and  pushing 
a  girlish  arm  into  her  captive's  leant  winningly 
on  her  and  pushed  her  playfully  and  tenderly  into 
the  garden  with  many  high  trilling  giggles.  It 
was  just  after  breakfast  and  the  men  were  all 
dispersing — some  had  already  dispersed — and 
Vera  saw  no  rescue  at  hand.  Mark  had  left  the 

room  to  fetch  some  papers  which  he  proposed  to 

287 


288  Saints  in  Society 

take  to  a  very  private  and  special  corner  of  the 
study  dedicated  to  himself,  an  alcove  necessarily 
well  known  to  Vera.  She  had  intended  to  join 
him  shortly,  but  in  a  weak  moment  she  had 
paused  to  glance  at  some  pathetically  tame 
pheasants  dabbing  in  and  out  amongst  the 
laurel  bushes  like  cocks  and  hens,  with  a  touch- 
ingly  foolish  confidence  in  creation  and  no  thought 
of  their  autumn  doom,  and  it  was  then  that  her 
hostess  pounced. 

Vera  shrugged  her  shoulders  resignedly,  but 
it  is  not  easy  to  shrug  with  a  determined  little 
person  hanging  her  full  weight  on  to  your  arm, 
so  the  shrug  came  only  on  one  side  of  Vera 
and  she  made  up  for  these  half  measures  by 
her  expression. 

Her  prattling  and  innocent  companion  raved 
excitedly  about  the  morning,  the  flowers,  Vera's 
gown,  and  her  own  conquests,  sartorial  and  other- 
wise, for  some  minutes,  and  then  came  with  a 
plunge  to  the  reason  of  her  attack.  She  said, 
with  infinite  sweetness, — 

"What  a  dear,  clever  man  that  Mr.  Hading 
is — so  brilliant.  We  all  admire  him  so  much. 
Panhard  says  he  is  the  most  talked-of  man  in 
town." 


Saints  in  Society  289 

Vera  smiled  faintly.  "  I  don't  suppose  he 
minds,"  she  answered,  also  sweetly.  "He  is 
above  talk  of  any  kind." 

"So  I  should  suppose,"  said  the  other  with 
meaning. 

"Should  you?"  said  Vera,  languidly.  "It 
is  not  always  so  with  risen  people,  nobodies, 
and  so  on.  But  of  course  he  is  too  noble  a  char- 
acter to  be  subservient  to  a  common  origin,  is  n't 
he?  It  is  only  the  butterflies  of  life  who  are 
ashamed  of  quite  impossible  ancestors .  Of  course, 
poor  things,  such  impossible  forbears  do  rob  them 
of  a  little  of  their  glitter." 

Mrs.  "  Pan"  set  her  small  teeth  at  this  rank  im- 
pertinence, but  smiled  over  the  clenched  pearly 
row  quite  fascinatingly.  "Yes,  but  perhaps 
such  nobility  is  a  misfortune.  He  is,  in  fact, 
such  a  noble  character  that  he  does  not  even 
recognise  traps  when  they  are  laid  for  him," 
was  her  reply.  "Those  dear,  good,  innocent 
persons  who  come  to  reform  London  are  so  often 
taken  in  by  the  designs  of  adventuresses  in  a  most 
wonderful  way.  Is  n't  it  so?  Society  teems 
with  such  creatures,  as  you  and  I  know,  dear. 
More  's  the  pity." 

"Have    you    constituted    your    little    self    his 

19 


290  Saints  in  Society 

mother,  dear?"  asked  Vera.  "You  are  rather 
young  to  do  that — you  and  he  are  contemporaries, 
surely?  He  tells  me  he  is  forty-two.  Still,  in 
experience  you  are  undoubtedly  his  elder." 

Mrs.  "  Pan  "  smiled  as  hyenas  smile  and  rattled 
all  her  little  "dangles,"  with  which  she  was 
covered  as  in  a  sort  of  jingling  armour. 

"Poor  Mr.  Hading  does  not  need  a  mother's 
care,"  she  replied  amiably.  "His  wife  and  he 
are  simply  devoted  to  one  another.  They  say 
he  quite  worships  her.  He  finds  other  women 
passing  amusements — he  told  me  so  himself. 
But  he  absolutely  adores  his  wife,  who  is  the 
most  beautiful  woman  I  have  ever  seen,  in  the 
intellectual  and  spirituelle  style."  (Vera's  pose 
was  spirituality.)  "She  makes  all  other  women 
of  that  type  look  old,  and  painted,  and  bolstered 
up  by  comparison." 

"/  have  never  seen  him  find  amusement  in 
other  women,"  said  Vera. 

"No,  you  would  n't,"  said  Mrs.  "Pan." 

"Naturally,  as  I  only  see  his  best  and  noblest 
ambitions.  He  keeps  his  folly  for  fools,  doubt- 
less." 

"Yes,  of  course.  He  has  to.  And  even  then, 
he  says,  they  take  him  seriously  and  think  he  has 


Saints  in  Society  291 

a  grande  passion  for  them,  when  after  all  he  is 
only  sneering  at  them  up  his  sleeve — and  to  his 
wife." 

"He  is  welcome  to  his  sleeve,"  said  Vera,  who, 
with  an  eye  that  blazed  in  spite  of  herself,  had 
pulled  her  arm  out  of  that  of  her  loving  friend 
on  the  pretext  of  slapping  one  of  her  hairless 
little  dogs  for  running  on  the  choicest  flower- 
beds. "But  as  to  his  wife,  as  he  never  sees  her, 
you  see  he  can  hardly  find  time  to  confide  in  her. 
Unless,  of  course,  as  may  be  the  case,  he  finds 
shady  personal  confidences  the  only  welcome 
conversation  for  low-born  East-enders  in  purple." 
(Mrs.  "  Pan"  was  clad  in  heliotrope.)  "  Those  peo- 
ple never  really  get  rid  of  their  inherent  love  of 
murkiness,  do  they?  After  all,  if  you  were  reared 
in  a  gutter  you  are  bound  to  have  rather  a — 
rather  a — garbagy  mind." 

It  was  Mrs.  "  Pan's  "  innings  for  a  glare.  Above 
all  she  prided  herself  on  the  "smartness"  (as  she 
called  it)  and  "ton"  of  her  rather  dangerous  and 
risky  conversation,  and  to  be  accused,  after  all 
her  efforts  in  that  direction,  of  a  "garbagy" 
mind  was  more  than  she  could  bear. 

"Certainly,"  she  sparkled  back  in  a  sprightly 
manner,  and  rather  a  higher  key  than  usual, 


292  Saints  in  Society 

"she  must  find  the  sins  of  the  smart  set  awfully 
entertaining,  if  that  is  the  case.  What  with  the 
follies  and  poor,  miserable  cheats  of  the  wretched 
crew  he  pretends  to  call  his  friends  he  must  be  able 
to  keep  her  amused,  I  should  think,  for  hours. 
He  told  me  that  he  is  carefully  studying  the  mem- 
bers of  the  decayed  aristocracy,  and  gleaning  all 
the  titbits  he  can  about  their  crimes  and  stupid- 
ities, especially  the  worn-out  Society  woman  and 
her  crew,  in  order  to  write  them  up  in  his  papers, 
and  lecture  about  them  to  all  those  dreadful 
Socialists  that  he  is  so  hand-and-glove  with. 
There  's  going  to  be  a  big  meeting  in  Trafalgar 
Square,  where  he  is  going  to  lecture  about  it  and 
all  that — run  down  the  worn-out  old  idiot  aristo- 
cracy (Oh,  I  beg  your  pardon,  dear — but  you 
know  what  those  wicked  Socialists  are!)  and  give 
personal  particulars  of  cases  he  has  known  per- 
sonally. It  will  be  most  awfully  exciting — we 
are  all  longing  for  it.  Have  n't  you  heard? " 

"No,"  said  Vera,  coldly.  "He  doesn't  men- 
tion such  absurd  projects  to  me." 

"Naturally,"  said  Mrs.  "Pan,"  in  a  soothing 
voice. 

"I  should  not  listen,"  said  Vera,  airily.  "I 
am  happy  to  say  I  am  the  confidante  of  his 


Saints  in  Society  293 

better  aspirations — not  of  his  sardonic  moods. 
In  the  progress  of  his  great  work  dear  Henry 
and  I  have  always  been  to  the  fore  to  assist  with 
advice  and  counsel.  Idle  chatter  we  should  not 
encourage."  Her  tone  was  that  of  an  inspiring 
goddess  from  a  height. 

"Ah,  then  evidently  that  is  why  he  does  not 
entirely  confide  in  you,"  said  Mrs.  "Pan."  "Be- 
cause, of  course,  every  one  has  heard  of  this  big 
meeting  in  Trafalgar  Square — every  one,  I  mean^ 
except  you.  He  is  writing  to  his  wife  about  it, 
and  she  is  tremendously  keen  about  the  matter. 
They  are  making  a  regularly  big  thing  of  it  be- 
tween them.  It  will  be  quite  the  political  event 
of  the  year.  Such  a  wife  as  that  must  be  a  great 
help  to  a  man." 

Vera  was  clearly  growing  weary  of  the  fray. 
"She  must,"  she  yawned.  "So  virtuous  and 
Early  Victorian  of  her  and  all  that.  In  these 
days  we  really  remark  good  wives,  don't  we? — 
most  of  them  are  so  notoriously  the  other  thing. 
I  can't  say  I  know  another,  besides  Mrs.  Hading. 
In  such  a  crowd  of  worn-out  old  pleasure-hunters 
as  one's  feminine  acquaintance,  she  stands  out 
quite  as  a  relief.  One  is  so  sick  of  the  kittenish, 
skittish  married  woman.  She  has  kicked  so  long. 


294  Saints  in  Society 

Her  snub  nose  and  her  frizzled  head  and  her  paid 
paragraphs  in  the  newspapers  are  so  boring — so 
are  her  everlasting  prize  kittens,  or  hens,  or 
marmosets,  or  whatever  the  creature  happens  to 
get  photographed  with.  Flippancy  done  to  death 
is  as  wearying  as  pomposity.  I  'm  sick  of  married 
kittens.  There  should  be  a  seven-and-sixpenny 
license  on  cats,  and  a  lethal  chamber  for  them  in 
the  end — only  they  never  do  end,  the  kind  I 
mean.  I  recollect  them  in  my  childhood  and 
they  are  at  it  still.  It 's  rather  boring. 

"Come,  ducky,  ducky,  ducky,  dilly  darling 
and  get  his  din-din-din!"  she  suddenly  cried 
out  ecstatically  to  one  of  her  hideous  dogs,  and 
picking  the  creature  up  in  her  arms  she  turned 
suddenly  into  a  side  door,  by  which  they  were 
passing,  saying  over  her  shoulder, — 

"  I  must  find  my  poor  ickle  boy-boy  a  biscuit, 
whatever  happens.  Such  a  wicked  world,  eh, 
baby?"  Over  the  dog's  head  she  added,  "You 
are  quite  mistaken,  dear.  There  will  be  no 
Trafalgar  Square  meeting."  So  she  escaped. 

But  she  did  not  let  the  grass  grow.  And  though 
Mrs.  "  Pan "  had  to  retire  practically  worsted, 
her  arrows  had  left  such  a  surging  mass  of  wrath 
and  spite  in  her  friend's  heart  that  even  that 


Saints  in  Society  295 

warrior  would  have  been  satisfied  with  her  morn- 
ing's move  had  she  but  known  it.  And  Vera  did 
not  feed  her  "ducky  ickle"  dog  at  all.  She  flung 
him  angrily  on  to  a  sofa  in  her  room,  and  prac- 
tically at  the  head  of  her  maid,  who  was  at  the 
moment  stooping  over  it  to  tidy  up  her  mistress's 
endless  litter  of  novels  and  odd  finery  with  which 
the  room  was  strewn.  Curtly  ordering  a  cutlet  for 
the  yapping  creature  (the  hairless  ones  lived  on 
cutlets)  she  made  a  violent  onslaught  on  her 
own  face  and  hair,  gazing  into  the  glass  with 
angry,  feverish  eyes.  She  altered  this  and  that 
decoration,  she  supplemented  her  colour,  she 
twisted  her  rings,  she  added  to  her  piled  hair 
a  thicker  plait,  all  in  that  eager  furious  fashion 
which  certainly  did  not  add  to  the  beauty  of 
her  reflection  in  the  dainty  mirror.  "That  cat!" 
she  muttered  half  audibly,  as  she  jerked  about 
her  pretty  gilt  and  blue  enamel  pots  and  cream 
jars  with  her  thin  knuckly  fingers  and  restless 
movements. 

How  dare  she  impugn  her — Vera's — power? 
Personal  impertinences  were  nothing  to  this. 
How  dare  the  woman  flaunt  the  man's  common 
wife  in  her  superior  eyes?  How  dare  she  quote 
that  slum  creature  and  her  charity  schemes  as 


296  Saints  in  Society 

a  reason  for  Mark's  not  having  succumbed  to 
her  own  fascinations?  What  were  things  com- 
ing to?  Was  she,  the  captivating,  sinuous,  intel- 
lectual siren  with  a  soul,  a  soul  that  had  long  been 
common  talk  in  the  Society  papers,  to  be  taunted 
by  Mark's  supposed  devotion  to  an  ignorant, 
upstart,  stupid,  tongue-tied  wife?  Viola  Vanner- 
heim  must  be  finally  and  entirely  crushed  for 
daring  to  suggest  such  a  thing. 

What  was  that  meeting  she  had  mentioned? 
Of  course  she,  Vera,  did  not  know  beforehand 
all  of  Mark's  political  engagements — it  was  not 
likely.  The  very  airiness  of  her  sympathy 
scorned  mere  dates  and  definite  business  plans 
as  being  beneath  its  crystalline  soul-sympathy 
altogether. 

But  anything  so  obviously  public  as  an  affair 
in  Trafalgar  Square  was  something  about  which 
she  ought  to  be  informed,  she  argued  to  herself. 
Could  it  be  possible  that  Mark's  absurd  creature 
of  a  wife  was  really  assisting  him  in  some  such 
matter,  or  that  her  ridiculous  seriousness  and 
charitiness  and  frumpiness  and  all  that  was 
going  to  be  put  to  account  in  some  solemn  scheme 
to  impress  the  British  public?  It  was  hardly  to 
be  believed.  Yet,  though  Vera  could  remember 


Saints  in  Society  297 

times  out  of  number  when  she  had  heard  Mark 
pour  sundry  of  his  pettish  complaints  against  his 
wife  into  her  ear,  she  also  remembered  his  tone 
last  night  in  the  card-room  when  her  name  had 
come  up  for  bantering  discussion.  Could  it  be 
that,  in  his  stupid,  middle-class  notions  of  do- 
mestic honour,  as  she  was  pleased  to  call  them, 
he  really  retained  a  sort  of  sub-rosa  belief  in, 
and  fidelity  to,  his  wife?  Was  his  ignorant  and 
common  origin  going  to  culminate  after  all  in  a 
pompous  tableau  of  conjugal  felicity,  and  leave 
her,  the  great,  the  all-powerful,  the  alluring,  out 
in  the  cold  after  all,  to  be  sneered  at  by  such  cats 
as  Viola  Vannerheim?  She  refused  to  stand  it. 
Mark  should  not  slip  away  from  her  carefully- 
woven  net  in  this  stupid  fashion.  She  did  not 
definitely  plan  any  future,  but  she  wanted  him 
at  her  feet.  And  she  wanted  the  world  to  see 
and  observe  the  conquest.  She  already  wore 
some  trifling  presents  of  his — soul-sympathy  is 
by  no  means  above  jewelled  charms  and  little 
glittering  trifles — and  she  had  really  toiled  with 
that  French  sociology  to  get  hold  of  so  many 
telling  phrases  with  which  to  work  up  his  entire 
belief  in  her  intellectual  resources  and  powers  of 
stateswomanship.  Was  some  idiotic  meeting 


298  Saints  in  Society 

about  those  tiresome  beggars  and  working-men 
to  be  the  means  of  her  losing  this  influence,  simply 
because  she  was  out  of  the  game  ?  Was  that  slow, 
stolid  Cockney  wife  of  his,  with  her  unmeaning 
gaze  and  shop-girl  type  of  beauty,  to  gain  an 
ascendency  over  him  after  all  simply  through  her 
interest  in  slums  and  those  horrid  things,  when  she 
had  herself,  in  order  to  gain  his  devotion,  given 
up  all  sorts  of  gaieties  and  pleasures  to  appear  the 
sibyl-eyed  goddess  Mark  now  imagined  her  to  be  ? 

Was  Mark  going  to  reconsider  his  old  im- 
patience with  the  girl  he  had  married  and  turn 
over  a  new  marital  leaf  just  because  a  few  old 
sentimental  ladies  of  title  were  making  a  fuss  over 
her?  Something  must  be  done,  and  that  quickly. 
But  first  she  would  see  if  it  was  so. 

All  these  reflections  had  passed  through  her 
mind  the  while  she  tricked  and  touched  up  her 
rather  vivid  charms  in  the  glass.  Now  she  set 
off  down-stairs  on  a  voyage  of  discovery,  intent 
on  finding  out  what  she  could  from  Mark  himself. 
He  was  still  in  the  study,  in  the  far  alcove,  when 
she  entered,  but  had  finished  his  correspondence 
and  was  standing  up  by  the  table  talking  loudly 
to,  or  at,  his  host,  Mr.  Vannerheim.  That  gentle- 
man, a  little  fair,  clean-shaven  person  of  the  build 


Saints  in  Society  299 

of  3,  stage  publican,  was  staring  back  at  his  vocifer- 
ous guest  with  about  as  blank  and  vacant  an  ex- 
pression as  anything  not  professedly  carved  out 
of  wood  and  painted  red  could  hope  to  look.  His 
very  wide-apart  goggle  eyes  were  fixed  on  Mark's 
determined  face  with  a  bewilderment  as  undis- 
guised as  it  was  flattering  to  Mark.  Later  on 
Mr.  Vannerheim  would  go  away  and  say  to  his 
friends,  "  By  Jove,  that 's  a  clever  chap.  He 
can  talk,  by  Jove!  He  fairly  puzzled  me  once 
or  twice.  He  's  real  deep,  he  is." 

When  Vera  entered  and  glided  sweetly  across 
the  room,  Mr.  Vannerheim  looked,  however, 
really  relieved.  The  process  of  being  puzzled 
by  a  genius  is  probably  more  pleasant  in 
retrospective  than  in  actual  working,  es- 
pecially when  your  motor  is  waiting  for 
you. 

"Come  in,  come  in,  Lady  Vera,"  he  said 
cordially.  "Just  hear  this  statesman  of  ours 
giving  me  the  straight  tip!  Here's  your  man  for 
making  the  Empire  spin,  eh?" 

However  that  might  be,  he  made  Mr.  Van- 
nerheim spin,  for  directly  Vera  approached  he 
unblushingly  fled  from  the  apartment  and 
leapt  into  his  waiting  car,  intent  on  a  distant 


3oo  Saints  in  Society 

horse-show,  his  broad  face  complacent  with  honest 
relief  at  his  escape. 

Vera  came  up  to  the  table  whereon  Mark's 
papers  were  scattered,  making  some  airy  remark. 
Vera's  spirituality  was  never  above  glancing  at 
the  superscription  of  other  people's  letters,  and 
her  steely  eye  travelled  now  along  the  little  pile 
of  correspondence  by  Mark's  despatch-box  and 
papers,  and  read  over  the  names  of  the  persons 
for  whom  they  were  intended,  even  while  she 
uttered  some  sweet  sentimentalism  for  his  benefit. 
Yes,  there  it  was,  a  letter  addressed  to  Mrs.  Had- 
ing at  Queen's  Gate,  in  Mark's  heavy  black  hand- 
writing. So  Viola  was  right  in  a  way.  He  had 
been  writing  to  his  wife. 

Vera  sat  down  in  the  window-seat  in  an  elegant 
attitude. 

She  began  at  once  about  the  coming  Labour 
crisis,  and  asked  him  one  or  two  leading  questions. 
He  was  ready  enough  to  reply,  Vannerheim's 
sudden  exit  having  robbed  him  of  what  he  in 
these  days  found  a  sheer  necessity  of  his  exist- 
ence— a  listener.  She  worked  round  very  grace- 
fully to  the  interest  his  wife  took  in  such  matters, 
and  asked  him  if  Clo  was  helping  him,  now  that 
she  was  become  such  an  expert  at  social  work. 


Saints  in  Society  301 

"I  shall  get  her  to  assist  me  about  my  speech 
at  the  mass  meeting  in  Trafalgar  Square,"  he 
said.  "  I  don't  mean  to  say  she  can  write  a 
speech,  or  anything  of  that  sort;  but  of  course 
her  work  amongst  the  lower  classes  gives  her  a 
good  all-round  knowledge  of  data,  and  so  on. 
I  've  just  written  to  her  about  it.  When  I  go 
back  to  town,  after  I  have  had  a  change  up  North 
during  the  vacation,  I  shall  get  her  to  work  it  all 
up  with  me.  She's  got  a  good  head  for  remember- 
ing the  ins  and  outs  of  all  those  people's  troubles. 
And  of  course  a  personal  touch  is  necessary — - 
one  must  go  in  for  the  personal  touch." 

Vera's  eyes  narrowed  as  she  listened.  Then 
it  was  true  that  he  and  his  wife  were  hand-and- 
glove  over  this  affair. 

"Ah,  yes,"  she  sighed  softly,  "that  must  be 
such  a  consolation  to  the  poor,  sa-a-d  creatures 
to  feel  that  you  know  them,  and  all  that.  But 
what  will  this  meeting  that  you  are  all  so  full  of 
lead  to?  What  will  it  do?  Is  it  not  only  raising 
their  hopes  only  to  dash  them  again?" 

Hading  looked  thoughtful. 

"Why,  yes,  in  a  sense,"  he  answered.  "But 
it  is  a  sort  of  necessity.  These  fellows  demand 
such  a  demonstration,  and  we,  their  chosen 


302  Saints  in  Society 

leaders,  have  got  to  appear.  My  name  was  down 
for  it  ages  ago.  They  pin  a  lot  of  faith  to  me 
and  what  I  can  do  for  them." 

"And  do  you?"  asked  Vera. 

"Do  I?  I  know  what  I  can  do  and  what  I 
could  do  in  the  future  if  I  set  to  work.  It  's  the 
way  you  set  about  that  sort  of  thing  that  counts 
— the  amount  of  personal  enthusiasm  you  put 
into  it.  I  got  very  sick  of  their  ingratitude  and 
folly  some  time  back,  but  I  'm  going  to  let  by- 
gones be  bygones  and  have  one  more  heave  at 
the  cart-wheel  before  I  give  the  lot  of  them  up  as 
hopeless,  'as  I  felt  very  like  doing  a  few  months 
ago."  His  brow  clouded.  "  It 's  been  a  long 
fight  against  a  hideous  want  of  appreciation  on 
all  sides.  But  I  'm  going  to  have  another  go. 
My  wife  won't  let  the  matter  rest.  She  goes  on 
believing  in  them.  I  may  yet  pull  things  through 
a  bit." 

Vera's  eyes  were  a  study. 

"Your  energy  is  marvellous,"  she  murmured 
very  softly,  "but  have  you  never  thought  that 
— that  you  are  giving  up  your  best  in  perhaps 
what  is  the  wrong  way? — the  wrong  channel? 
Dear,  dear  friend,  why  not  forego  the  unending 
labour-struggle  and  use  the  wonderful  power 


Saints  in  Society  303 

of  your  Press  influence,  your  writings,  your 
papers,  for  the  same  dear,  sad  creatures?  Would 
you  not  be  doing  wider  good  in  the  end?" 

He  looked  thoughtfully  out  at  the  sky  between 
the  waving  trees. 

"I  have  had  ideas  that  way,"  he  said,  "but 
it  means  a  good  bit  to  a  man  like  me  to  relinquish 
a  work  he  has  once  taken  up.  I  'm  not  one  of 
your  triflers — not  I." 

"  Still,  why  keep  the  shell  of  a  belief  when  the 
soul  of  it  has  gone?"  said  Vera. 

"Gone?"  He  wheeled  round  and  stared  at 
her  blackly.  "Who  said  it  had  gone?  By 
George,  you  people — you  are  never  satisfied 
with  what  a  fellow  does!  I  might  slave,  and 
toil,  and  work,  and  bear  all  the  onus  of  public 
life  till  I  died  in  the  attempt,  but  no  one  would 
thank  me.  Who  thanks  me? — I  ask  you.  See 
what  I  've  given  up,  and  how  I  've  worked. 
Yet,  I  say,  who  thanks  me?" 

"  I  do, "  said  Vera,  very  softly. 

"You  do?" 

"I  do,  because  you  have  shown  me  what  a 
truly  great  man  can  be.  So  much  so,  that  I 
now  believe  that  you  are  too  great  for  the  miser- 
able rdle  of  party  politics.  You  are  cramped,  my 


304  Saints  in  Society 

friend.  You  are  tied  and  tethered.  Rise  out  of 
it.  Refuse  to  do  it  any  more.  Turn  your  bril- 
liant talents  to  the  larger  and  vaster  field  of  your 
writings  and  Press  influence.  That — that  is  the 
way  to  serve  the  poor  dear  creatures  best  of  all." 

"You  do  not  know  what  you  are  suggesting," 
he  replied,  but  he  appeared  half  inclined  to  listen, 
and  they  stayed  for  an  hour  talking  and  turning 
over  the  problems  that  beset  him.  Her  periods 
were  inspiring. 

Late  that  afternoon  Vera,  strolling  in  the  park, 
encountered  her  brother  returning  that  way 
from  fishing.  She  joined  him,  and  lightly  turned 
the  talk  to  the  Trafalgar  Square  meeting. 

"Those  wretched  canaille  are  very  ungrateful," 
she  said.  "I  don't  see,  really,  what  poor  Mr. 
Hading  can  do  to  satisfy  them.  It  is  a  mere 
waste  of  his  time." 

Lord  Henry  laughed  shortly.  He  never  took 
his  soulful  sister  seriously.  He  knew  her  of  old. 

"Don't  you  bother  about  it,  Vedi.  He  can 
see  to  himself.  We  Ve  all  got  to  bear  ingratitude 
some  time  or  another.  It  won't  break  Hading's 
heart,  I  should  imagine."  Vera  seemed  thought- 
ful. 

"Suppose   he   got   out  of  the   whole   thing?" 


Saints  in  Society  305 

she  said,  "what  would  happen  to  him 
then?" 

Henry  stroked  his  chin  and  looked  at  her. 

" Is  he  going  to?"  he  said. 

"Oh,  I  am  only  putting  a  case,"  was  her  reply. 

"Well,  I  suppose  he  'd  survive,"  said  her 
brother.  "  His  corpse  would,  that  is." 

"His  what?" 

"Oh,  I  only  spoke  allegorically.  I  was  only 
putting  a  case,"  he  laughed. 

"  But  it  would  not  destroy  his  chances — his 
ambitions,  would  it?" 

"Well,  it  depends  what  his  ambitions  are — 
whether  he  wants  to  become — a  newspaper 
paragraph  or  a  poem,"  said  Henry. 

Vera  shook  herself  angrily. 

"I  know  you  think  you're  mystic,"  she  an- 
swered. "  But  it 's  very  easy  to  talk  in  that  way 
and  think  it 's  deep." 

But  Henry  only  laughed  and  went  on  his  way. 

"Nevertheless,"  said  Vera  to  herself,  "that 
woman  shall  not  triumph.  There  will  be  no 
Trafalgar  Square  meeting — for  Mark.  I  will 
show  them  what  I  can  do  with  him.  They  shall 
see  my  influence — what  I  can  do.  How  7,  and 
not  his  wife,  can  sway  his  destiny!" 


20 


306  Saints  in  Society 

If  she  had  been  of  common  birth  she  would 
have  added  "So  there!"  She  had  a  "so  there" 
look  on  her  pinched  and  hard  little  face.  She 
was  standing  by  the  trout  stream  that  ran  through 
the  park  at  the  foot  of  a  lovely  wooded  hill,  where 
Henry  had  left  her.  She  was  gazing  unseeingly 
into  the  water  as  she  did  so,  with  her  face  set  in 
the  thin  absorption  of  a  mean  and  selfish  purpose. 
All  nature  is  altruistic.  The  stream,  silvery, 
lapping,  and  cool,  fed  the  water-plants  and 
stately  reared  loosestrife,  like  a  city  of  purple 
church  spires,  and  gave  them  life  and  blessing. 
The  loosestrife  city  gave  harbour  to  myriad  water 
insects.  The  insects  cleared  the  water's  smooth 
surface  and  robbed  it  of  its  foul  secretions.  A 
little  cheery  business  of  give-and-take  went  on 
amongst  all  these  things  and  creatures,  and  made 
them  hum  and  sing  together  tenderly.  Only  the 
human  creature  standing  there  was  cursed,  and 
self -murdered  by  self. 

A  toad,  climbing  out  of  the  water  sedges, 
set  to  work  to  pass  her,  placing  his  laborious 
silky  legs  carefully  in  the  deep,  cool  grasses,  so 
as  not  to  attract  her  attention.  He  raised  to  her 
a  soft  agate-coloured  eye  by  way  of  caution,  and 
betook  his  wet  pied  body  and  grand  peaceful 


Saints  in  Society  307 

face  into  the  shade  of  his  home  rushes.  He  was 
after  his  own  small  business,  or  keen  to  join  his 
soft  and  slimy  family  in  their  dripping  nest. 
Could  a  photographer  have  taken  a  snap-shot 
then  at  his  calm,  goldy-green  eyes,  and  another 
at  Vera's  steely  orbs  with  their  mean  glitter,  the 
toad  would  have  come  off  best  in  beauty  of  ex- 
pression. He  at  least  meant  no  harm.  She  fed 
on  it. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THAT  year  the  autumn  brought  to  London,  at 
any  rate,  grey  and  cloudy  skies,  prolonged 
and  unnatural  heat,  south-west  or  west  winds,  and 
a  muggy,  fever-haunted  atmosphere.  In  these 
miasmic  conditions  the  germs  of  disease,  always 
lurking  in  the  crowded  houses  of  the  wretched 
poor,  took  fresh  life  and  strength,  and  a  series 
of  epidemics  attacked  the  more  squalid  corners 
of  the  great  city.  Added  to  this,  trade  was  as 
bad  as  could  be,  and  the  want  of  work  amongst 
even  the  labouring  classes  honestly  willing  to 
labour  was  appalling. 

The  Liberal  Government  had  proved  an  ex- 
pensive toy,  and  at  best  but  a  poor  substitute 
for  that  manned  mainly  by  Crawshay's  cousins. 
These  gentlemen,  at  least,  had  made  fewer 
promises  and  had  not  at  all  posed  as  hoping  to 
right  the  world.  They  had  run  their  Govern- 
ment on  the  simple  lines  that  this  is  a  very  shaky 

world,  but  by  a  gentlemanly  air  of  indifference 

308 


Saints  in  Society  309 

you  may  at  least  save  it  from  going  bankrupt. 
The  Liberals  had,  however,  signalised  their  return 
to  power  by  a  series  of  violent  quarrels  amongst 
themselves,  by  petty  wars  and  wearing  Euro- 
pean squabbles;  and,  through  the  want  of  a  real 
leader,  had  turned  the  affairs  of  the  nation 
into  a  sort  of  bear  garden  of  greedy,  dancing 
lunatics. 

Grandiloquent  promises,  always  impossible  of 
execution,  which  they  had  made  had  come  to 
nothing.  The  man-in- the-street  wished  to  know 
why.  That  personage,  having  at  all  times  no 
gleam  of  imagination,  failed  to  see  that  no  human 
agency  (and  this  Government  was  naively  hu- 
man) could  possibly  have  brought  such  things 
to  pass  in  any  case,  and  flew  at  its  unfortunate 
representatives  with  the  growling  of  a  tiger — a 
growl  threatening  to  develop  into  a  roar  if  some- 
thing were  not  done,  and  done  soon. 

A  man  of  their  party  who  could  have  seen 
even  a  little  way  out  of  the  tangle  would  have 
been  invaluable  at  such  a  time.  The  task  re- 
quired dauntless  courage  and  deep  sympathy. 
Tiresome,  rude,  ignorant,  selfish,  and  hopelessly 
stupid  as  the  working-man  often  was,  he  was  also 
miserably  housed,  miserably  sweated,  hungry, 


310  Saints  in  Society 

and  desperate.  His  dirty  little  children  suffered 
just  as  much  as  they  would  have  done  had  he  and 
they  been  clean  and  virtuous.  Parents  who 
stupidly  expect  to  be  "kep"  by  the  parish  or  the 
State  are  certainly  to  blame,  infinitely  so;  but 
meanwhile,  from  the  babies'  point  of  view — and 
the  babies  are  the  coming  citizens — there  is  hunger 
to  face,  cold,  want  of  fires  in  bitter  weather,  sick- 
ness, stunted  growth,  and  no  childhood.  The 
parents  had  absurd,  ignorant  theories.  But  the 
babies  suffered  for  them.  The  babies  sat  in  cor- 
ners of  cellars  and  garrets,  with  blue  fingers  and 
pinched  lips,  staring  out  of  the  gloom,  shuddering 
with  cold,  and  wondering,  wondering  why  this 
world  they  had  come  into  a  few  years  ago  existed 
at  all.  Trailing  no  clouds  of  glory,  so  deeply 
occupied  were  they  in  trying  to  get  food  and 
warmth  into  their  skeleton  bodies.  Mockeries 
of  babies.  Caricatures  of  what  God  meant  for 
human  young  ones.  Cunning,  hideous,  filthy 
monkeys,  puzzled,  indeed,  at  the  sea  of  despair 
in  which  they  found  themselves  trying  to  keep 
somehow  afloat,  and  worn  by  sharp  agony  to  a 
dim  realisation  that  nothing  but  defiance,  savage 
greed,  theft,  and  lying  would  serve  any  purpose,  as 
shipwrecked  sailors  cast  adrift  will  turn  by  the 


Saints  in  Society  311 

process  of  a  week's  anguish  to  the  horrors  of 
cannibalism. 

Clo's  work  had  grown  to  huge  dimensions. 
A  certain  great  and  childless  peeress  of  im- 
mense wealth  had  entered  into  its  aims  with 
practical  effect,  and  she  was  but  one  out  of  the 
many  of  Clo's  friends  who  now  joined  her.  This 
lady,  named  Jane,  Countess  of  Highgate,  had  in 
the  spring  begun  the  building  of  a  large  hall  or 
institute  to  be  permanently  endowed  for  the 
better  carrying  out  of  the  great  work,  and  it 
would  shortly  be  ready  for  occupation.  Clo  and 
her  committee  were  deep  in  the  organising  of  the 
myriad  rules  and  plans  for  this  vast  scheme, 
which  was  slowly,  if  unconsciously,  growing  to  be 
the  actual  realisation  of  Mark's  dream  of  the 
"  Child  Citizen  "  days.  Here  hundreds  of  children 
of  the  very  poor  were  to  be  amused,  instructed, 
fed,  and  assisted  in  every  way  out  of  school  hours. 
Every  case  was  rigidly  inquired  into  before  a 
new  member  was  admitted  by  a  staff  of  trained 
women,  who  made  such  inquiries  part  of  their 
duty.  There  were  many  rules  and  regulations, 
but  the  main  idea  was  to  teach  the  children  self- 
respect,  Christian  principles,  innocent  gaiety, 
and  happy,  healthy  youth.  Pastimes  suited  to 


312  Saints  in  Society 

physical  development  were  carefully  taught, 
good  meals  provided  for  those  who  needed  them, 
and  easy,  simple  lectures  on  child  ethics  given 
once  or  twice  a  week  by  those  who  fully  under- 
stood their  little  listeners. 

The  good  results  were  incalculable.  Brighter 
eyes,  rounder  faces,  happier  laughter,  keener 
interest  in  their  studies,  and  love  and  devotion 
to  their  kind  teachers  were  not  the  least  of  these 
results;  and  many  a  gutter-rat,  whose  future 
seemed  clearly  the  prison  or  the  grave,  would 
evolve  in  such  sunshine  into  a  human  being, 
from  that  to  a  happy,  clean,  human  being,  and 
from  that  to  a  thinking,  God-fearing,  wholesome 
citizen. 

But  though,  as  the  winter  went  on  and  the 
cold  weather  appeared,  hundreds  of  ragged 
children  were  thus  benefited,  whilst  hundreds 
more,  as  out-members,  were  entitled  to  call  at 
the  club  for  one  meal  a  day,  there  remained  the 
vast  area  of  London  still  wallowing  in  its  misery 
and  killing  off  or  stunting  its  young  ones  by 
thousands. 

At  this  juncture  the  eyes  of  all  the  poor  were 
directed  towards  one  event  which  promised 
much.  They  were  looking  to  the  great  mass 


Saints  in  Society  313 

meeting  of  the  unemployed  in  Trafalgar  Square 
on  a  certain  coming  Sunday,  when  it  was  hoped 
that  some  resolution  could  be  arrived  at  to 
meet  the  now  frightful  problem  of  living  that 
thousands  had  daily  to  face.  Mark's  name  had 
long  been  down  as  one  of  the  speakers,  together 
with  the  names  of  two  well-known  Labour  mem- 
bers. The  chairman  was  a  famous  and  humanely 
hearted  personage  on  the  County  Council.  The 
attendance  promised  to  be  immense.  The  poor 
from  all  the  worst  quarters  of  the  Metropolis  had 
long  been  in  preparation  for  it.  Upon  its  poten- 
tialities the  hopes  of  many  almost  despairing 
creatures  were  centred,  and  had  been  centred 
for  months. 

Mark,  "up  to  his  eyes,"  as  he  put  it,  in  his 
newspaper  affairs,  nevertheless  was  busy  col- 
lecting some  data  for  his  proposed  speech  on  this 
occasion.  In  one  of  the  rare  intervals  in  his 
rushing  career  when  he  saw  Clo  long  enough  to 
speak  with  her  words  longer  than  monosyllables, 
he  asked  her  a  few  questions  about  Walworth 
affairs,  and  took  rapid  notes  of  her  replies.  Her 
knowledge  of  the  area  in  which  she  worked  was 
the  more  perfect  because  of  that  very  "literal" 
quality  of  which  he  had  secretly  complained. 


314  Saints  in  Society 

Having  no  hysterical  imaginings,  she  gave  him 
pat  answers  like  a  born  secretary,  and  materially 
assisted  his  collection  of  data  with  facts  which, 
even  baldly  stated,  were  picturesque — as  all 
tragedy  is  picturesque.  He  could  not  have  had  a 
more  effective  assistant  at  such  a  time. 

For  weeks  Clo's  heart  had  been  wrapped  up 
in  the  possibilities  of  this  meeting,  and  in  these 
brief  conversations  she  gathered  a  clearer  idea 
of  what  Mark  meant  to  propose  as  an  answer 
to  the  great  conundrums  than  her  domestic, 
practical  little  notions  could  ever  have  evolved 
by  themselves. 

And  as  the  days  drew  nearer  to  it  she  made 
every  endeavour  to  add  her  meed  of  assistance 
to  the  already  clear  statement  of  facts  with 
which  she  had  supplied  him,  and  yet  forbore  to 
allow  him  to  feel  the  least  annoyance  by  any 
affectionate  allusion  to  her  old  friends,  so  eager 
was  she  for  his  success  at  the  great  meeting. 

They  had  had  no  further  discussion  over  the 
matter  which  had  spoilt  her  triumph  at  Court, 
and  indeed  Mark  appeared  on  his  wife's  horizon 
so  rarely  now  that  such  arguments  would  have 
been  impossible,  even  had  Clo  desired  them. 

She  was  a  little  penitent,  too.     She  was  sorry 


Saints  in  Society  315 

to  have  annoyed  him  by  her  carelessness,  and  now 
that  he  was  so  keen  about  the  mass  meeting  she 
would  do  anything  to  please  and  help  him. 

"Perhaps,"  she  said  to  herself,  "I  do  not 
understand  him." 

Her  heart  was  so  full  of  the  new  enterprise 
that  she  was  not  a  little  amazed  on  the  Saturday 
evening  before  the  great  Sunday  to  see  Mark  come 
hurriedly  into  her  own  private  sanctum  and  bid 
her  a  hurried  good-bye.  It  was  just  time  to  dress 
for  dinner,  and,  moreover,  two  friends  were 
expected. 

"Oh!  what  is  it?"  she  cried;  "you  surely 
are  not  going  out  of  town,  Mark?"  Her  eye 
caught  the  departing  figure  of  his  man  hurrying 
downstairs  with  some  luggage. 

"I  must,"  he  answered.  "It's  most  impor- 
tant business.  But  I  shall  be  up  in  time  for  the 
meeting,  no  fear.  I'll  go  straight  to  Charing 
Cross  and  join  them  in  good  time." 

"But" — she  mentioned  the  names  of  their 
friends — "are  coming.  Surely  it  can  wait — 
your  business — till  after  the  meeting?" 

"You  must  make  my  apologies,"  he  called 
out,  going  downstairs.  "  Henley  's  waiting  for 
me  in  his  motor.  He  's  got  Vannerheim  with 


316  Saints  in  Society 

him,  too.  It 's  really  important,  Clo.  Why, 
Vannerheim  can  do  lots  for  those  poor  dear 
chaps  if  he  likes.  You  '11  see  what  we  're  going 
to  do  amongst  us." 

She  heard  the  loud  snorting  of  a  motor  as 
the  man  opened  the  hall  door,  and  Mark  hailed 
by  his  two  friends,  and  before  she  realised  that 
she  had  not  his  address  the  door  shut  and  he 
was  gone. 

Still,  she  thought,  he  will  be  up  to-morrow; 
and  if  anything  came  for  him  no  doubt  he  would 
be  found  at  Chassingham,  or,  failing  that,  at  the 
shooting-box  of  his  other  companion,  Sir  Millar 
Henley,  a  place  only  a  few  miles  from  Vanner- 
heim's. 

She  made  the  best  of  his  departure  to  her 
guests,  and  got  through  the  evening  cheerfully, 
hoping  great  things  for  the  morrow.  When  the 
Sunday  morning  came,  a  grey,  misty,  miserable 
day,  she  went,  according  to  her  usual  custom,  to 
church,  but  her  mind  strayed  again  and  again 
to  the  cares  of  the  afternoon  and  the  great 
project  she  had  at  heart. 

The  clergyman,  a  thin  High  Churchman, 
preached  a  long  monotoned  sermon  on  the  inter- 
minable comments  of  the  Fathers  upon  a  certain 


Saints  in  Society  317 

trifling  matter  of  Church  observance,  took  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  to  annihilate  Origen,  and 
quoted  Augustine  in  the  obvious  belief  that  that 
great  humanist  was  at  least  a  god — a  Keble 
College  god  in  an  Oxford  frame.  Clo  came  away 
not  greatly  the  wiser.  Her  heart  was  so  full. 

On  her  return  to  Queen's  Gate  she  found  Still- 
ingfleet  awaiting  her  with  a  message  from  Lord 
Henry.  It  was  to  ask  whether  Mr.  Hading  would 
be  sure  to  be  at  the  meeting  punctually  by  three 
o'clock.  From  Vade,  as  a  philanthropist  and  a 
friend  of  some  years'  standing,  this  question  came 
quite  without  offence. 

"  Yes,  he  will  be  there,"  said  she. 

"  You  are  quite  sure  that  he  understood — he 
made  a  note  of  the  day  and  hour?"  Stilling- 
fleet  asked,  an  odd  expression  in  his  fine  woman's 
eyes. 

"  Of  course,"  she  said,  "  he  is  to  be  at  Charing 
Cross  by  the  2.30  train.  He  is  either  at  Chass- 
ingham  or  Rocker's  Hill.  He  went  down  yester- 
day with  Sir  Millar  Henley  and  Mr.  Vannerheim." 

"  I  have  just  motored  up  from  Chassingham," 
said  Stillingfleet ;  "  Mr.  Hading  is  not  there.  He 
can  hardly,  I  think,  be  at  Rocker's  Hill,  as  Sir  Mil- 
lar was  also  of  the  party — at  the  Vannerheims',  I 


Saints  in  Society 

mean.  I  thought  I  heard  some  one  say  he 
was  gone  up  North,  and  mentioning  the  matter 
to  Lord  Henry  he  asked  me  to  come  and 
inquire." 

"Oh!  there  is  some  mistake,"  she  answered; 
"he  will  be  there,  let  Lord  Henry  rest  assured." 

But  when  Stillingfleet  had  gone  she  began  to 
feel  really  anxious.  She  wished  she  had  inquired 
a  little  further  as  to  the  report  he  mentioned.  It 
was  odd.  Without  divesting  herself  of  her  hat 
and  furs  she  took  her  lonely  lunch,  thinking  over 
what  she  ought  to  do.  It  was  not  like  Lord  Henry 
to  send  Stillingfleet  all  tfiat  way  for  a  mere  notion 
— he  was  no  alarmist.  Little  as  in  those  days 
she  knew  of  Mark's  movements  this  secrecy  at 
such  a  juncture  seemed  peculiar,  and  there  was 
not  a  little  air  of  mystery  in  Stillingfleet's  manner 
now  she  came  to  think  it  over.  What  did  it  all 
mean?  She  must  ask  advice:  but  from  whom? 
Then  she  thought  of  her  good  friend,  the  great 
peeress  who  had  helped  her  in  her  work,  and 
to  whose  kind  heart  these  pressing  matters  were 
as  dear  as  to  her  own.  Lady  Highgate  lived 
within  a  reasonable  drive  from  Queen's  Gate. 
Clo  did  not  wait  for  the  carriage,  but  hailed  a 
hansom  and  drove  at  once  to  that  stately  abode. 


Saints  in  Society  319 

Her  ladyship  was  at  home,  said  the  man,  and  Clo 
was  shown  up  to  her  room. 

A  very  tall,  thin  old  lady  rose  up  at  Clo's  en- 
trance, out  of  what  appeared  to  be  a  sea  of  wool 
mats  and  antimacassars,  and  met  and  embraced 
her. 

"  What  is  it  ?"  she  said ;  "  I  know  there  is  some- 
thing the  matter  by  your  face.' 

Clo  explained  roughly,  saying,  "  What  shall  I 
do?  Can  I  do  anything?  " 

"You  can  do  nothing,"  replied  the  other;  "it 
may  be  a  false  alarm.  Why  should  he  go  North? 
Is  there  any  reason  for  him  to  do  so? " 

Clo's  face  went  a  little  paler,  but  she  made  no 
reply.  Why  indeed?  She  put  the  fearful  sus- 
picion at  once  out  of  her  mind,  with  a  shudder. 

"  Of  course  he  may  yet  be  there,  as  he  said  he 
would,"  she  answered.  "  I  do  not  know  why  I 
bothered  you,  dear  Lady  Highgate.  But  our 
house  seems  lonely  and  my  nerves  get  the  better 
of  me,  I  think,  sometimes.  Mr.  Stillingfleet's 
manner  seemed  to  conceal  something — but  pos- 
sibly I  was  quite  mistaken." 

"You  have  been  doing  too  much,  dear  child," 
said  Lady  Highgate,  who  had  a  thin  eagle  face 
and  severely  dressed  hair,  and  a  cap  with  bows, 


320  Saints  in  Society 

like  the  pictures  of  Charley's  Aunt,  and  who 
wore  over  her  shoulders  a  magenta  China  silk 
shawl :  and  in  spite  of  this  looked  awe-inspiring, 
stately,  and  noble,  and  by  no  means  a  figure  of  fun 
—so  far  will  character  go.  Moreover  her  stern 
features  were  softened  just  now  with  a  very  kind 
glance  for  her  troubled  friend. 

"  The  meeting  is  to-day  ?  "  said  this  lady. 

"  Yes,  at  three  o'clock,"  answered  Clo. 

"  Your  husband — he  is  to  suggest  a  remedy?  " 
said  she. 

"  That  was  his  idea,"  said  his  wife. 

"Then,  my  dear,"  said  Lady  Highgate,  "if  he 
comes  well  and  good.  The  remedy  is  his.  Surely 
he  will  be  there,  who  has  worked  so  hard  for  the 
cause.  But  if  he  does  not  come — I  will  give 
three  thousand  pounds  towards  a  remedy  of  our 
own." 

Clo  burst  into  tears,  thanking  her  brokenly 
for  her  goodness.  Lady  Highgate  patted  the  hand 
she  held  and  bade  her  take  heart.  She,  too, 
knew  the  suspicion  that  was  wearing  the  girl's 
mind  out  alone  in  the  big  empty  house,  but  know- 
ing consolation  itself  on  such  a  point  to  be  an 
insult  she  intended  to  divert  her  thoughts. 

"  Drive  down  to  Charing  Cross  to  meet  him," 


Saints  in  Society  321 

she  said,  "it  will  cheer  you  up.  But  remember 
my  promise." 

Clo  took  the  kindly  advice,  and  bidding  good- 
bye to  this  generous  and  gentle  friend  she  got 
into  her  hansom,  but  told  the  man  to  call  at 
Queen's  Gate  first,  as  there  might  be  a  message. 
There  was — simply  a  telegram  from  Hading.  Its 
bald  lines  ran  as  follows : 

"  Sorry  cannot  be  at  meeting.  Saying  I  'm 
ill.— M." 

She  let  it  fall  from  her  helpless  hand.  They 
were  right  then.  He  was  not  coming.  She 
picked  it  up  again  and  looked  at  the  address — • 
it  was  the  Post-Office,  Renby,  a  little  place  on 
the  Great  Northern  line .  Then  they  were  right — 
he  had  gone  North.  But  the  worst  of  all  was  the 
mean  lie  at  the  end,  "  Saying  I  'm  ill."  Ho  ware 
the  mighty  fallen !  Contempt  will  help  us  to  bear, 
sometimes,  things  which  would  otherwise  break 
our  hearts.  A  slow  flush  rose  to  this  woman's 
face  and  neck  as  she  saw  as  in  a  flashlight  the 
depth  to  which  Mark  had  fallen,  and  she  stood  a 
moment  bathed  in  the  shame  he  could  not  feel 
for  himself.  If  angels  weep  they  must  also  some- 
times blush.  Then  a  brighter  light  flashed  into 
her  eyes,  and  a  braver  bearing  lifted  her  head 


322  Saints  in  Society 

and  gave  alertness  to  her  feet.  She  went  to 
Mark's  study.  His  private  desk  was  closed,  but 
he  had  forgotten  to  lock  it.  She  opened  it  now 
ruthlessly. 

Yes,  there  were  the  notes  of  his  speech:  there 
was  his  neatly-drawn-up  scheme  for  relief.  He 
had  not  meant  to  speak  last  night  when  he  left 
her.  The  Charing  Cross  story  was  untrue:  had 
he  followed  such  a  plan  he  had  known  he  would 
have  been  without  his  memoranda.  She  had 
nothing  more  to  learn.  She  gathered  up  the 
papers  and  left  the  room.  The  idol  had  fallen. 


CHAPTER    XX 

CLO  did  not  give  herself  a  moment  to  think. 
Returning  to  her  hansom  she  told  the  man 
to  drive  to  Wai  worth,  but  to  pass  through  Trafal- 
gar Square  on  the  way.  When  they  came  to  the 
great  sloping  square  she  found  it,  as  she  expected, 
already  full  of  the  most  miserable,  battered, 
dreary-looking  specimens  of  humanity  the  mind 
can  picture.  Some  of  the  poor  wretches  had 
tramped  for  miles  in  boots  that  hardly  covered 
their  feet,  and  many  of  them  had  with  them 
miserable  drabs  of  wives  who  themselves  had 
bravely  footed  the  long  walk  through  slush  and 
mist  and  mud,  having  partaken  of  no  dinner. 
All  hoping,  hoping,  hoping.  All  doomed  to  tramp 
home  again  to  fireless  houses  with  no  hope. 

On  the  temporary  platform  she  could  see  the 
chairman,  Mr.  Beatman,  already  in  his  place 
and  in  deep  conference  with  several  eager  men. 
The  police  were  busy,  foreseeing  further  addi- 
tions to  the  scene. 

323 


324  Saints  in  Society 

It  took  some  time  to  get  to  Walworth,  the  greasy 
state  of  the  roads  preventing  the  man  from 
driving  quickly,  and  when  she  reached  the  little 
Settlement  at  last  she  found  Dorcas  out,  having 
been  called  away  to  visit  a  dying  child.  She 
followed  her  to  the  address  given  by  the  Sister 
in  charge,  but  could  not,  of  necessity,  bring  her 
away  at  once,  and  was  obliged,  after  sending  in 
a  message,  to  wait  outside  the  poor  house  in  her 
cab,  literally  shaking  with  impatience. 

When  at  last  Dorcas  came  out  she  found  a 
very  silent,  resolute  edition  of  her  friend,  and 
Clo  told  her  hurriedly  to  jump  in  and  tell  the 
man  to  drive  to  Trafalgar  Square. 

The  meeting  had  been  in  full  swing  for  some 
time  when  the  cab  at  last  drew  up  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  immense  crowd.  There  was  a  sound 
of  groaning  and  hissing,  and  a  sort  of  a  long  rum- 
bling moan  of  discontent  from  time  to  time  swayed 
the  great  neutral-tinted  multitude,  like  the  bay- 
ing of  a  great  dog  in  a  discontented  sleep.  The 
faces  of  men  near  looked  angry  and  disappointed, 
some  of  them  set  and  despairing.  Clo  spoke  to 
a  man  near  her  cab,  asking  the  cause  of  this. 

"  Cause? "  said  he,  "  cause  enough.  God  knows! 
I  tell  you,  there  's  not  a  single  Labour  leader  on 


Saints  in  Society  325 

that  there  platform  this  day — not  one,  there 
ain't.  Robinson  's  funked  it — Slade,  Wilson, 
Hading,  they  're  all  alike.  But  Hading  's  worst 
of  all;  he  's  done  least  and  promised  most.  May 
he —  He  uttered  a  curse  too  terrible  to  repeat 
and  Clo  turned  away  in  horror. 

"We  're  to  go  home,"  howled  another  man  to 
the  winds,  or  the  mist,  or  any  passer-by  who 
would  listen,  "  with  no  hope  left.  We  thought 
somethink  'ud  come  of  this.  We  're  to  tramp 
home  emptier  than  we  came.  There  ain't  nothin' 
more  to  hope  for." 

And  now  the  surging  roar  that  had  been  grow- 
ing in  volume  began  to  swell  into  an  ominous 
sound,  hoarse  and  discordant.  The  chairman 
was  trying  to  speak — he  at  least  was  genuine 
in  his  efforts.  Clo  scribbled  a  few  words  on  her 
visiting  card,  and  calling  a  policeman  near  asked 
him  to  convey  it  to  the  chairman,  Mr.  Beatman. 
The  man  hesitated  till  she  drew  his  attention  to 
the  name,  saying  she  came  from  Hading.  Then 
she  saw  him  elbow  his  way  through  the  crowd 
with  extreme  difficulty,  and  eventually  deliver 
the  note  to  the  speaker.  There  was  a  pause  and 
a  few  minutes'  consultation. 

The  people  observed  the  interruption  but  took 


326  Saints  in  Society 

the  message  received  by  the  chairman  to  be  but 
one  more  excuse  that  had  reached  him  that  day 
as  the  afternoon  wore  on.  At  this  they  set  up 
a  loud  howl  of  derision,  that  went  swaying  and 
swelling  over  the  great  sea  of  packed  miserables 
like  the  incoming  of  a  thunderous  ocean.  So 
busy  were  they  with  this  burst  of  baffled  rage 
that  only  a  few  persons,  and  those  only  in  the 
direct  line,  saw  two  women  guarded  by  police 
push  their  way  tortuously  through  the  great 
multitude  and  climb  the  steps  at  the  foot  of  the 
Nelson  Monument.  It  was  not  until  Clo  ar- 
rived at  the  middle  of  the  platform  and  stood 
there  upright,  with  Dorcas  Deane  at  her  side, 
that  they  realised  what  had  happened,  and  then 
they  broke  into  a  shout  of  half-hilarious  amaze- 
ment. There  on  the  grey  stone  steps,  in  front  of 
the  great  grey  pillar,  flanked  by  the  grey  lions,  and 
surrounded  by  thousands  of  ashy,  dun-coloured, 
•surging  beings  in  the  dim,  dull  gleam  of  a  Decem- 
ber Sunday  afternoon  in  London,  stood  a  lady  of 
extraordinary  beauty  and  commanding  height, 
obviously  waiting  to  speak. 

Clo  still  wore  the  clothes  she  had  worn  for 
church  in  the  morning,  and  the  effect  of  her  ex- 
treme fairness  against  the  rich  wealth  of  her  furs 


Saints  in  Society  327 

velvet  garments,  little  suited  indeed  to  her 
surroundings,  gave  her  an  almost  fantastic  ap- 
pearance. At  her  side  the  fair-faced  Mission 
woman  in  her  Quaker-like  uniform  made  a 
unique  contrast;  such  a  pair  had  probably  never 
•  before  stood  up  to  face  such  an  audience.  The 
chairman  tried  to  command  silence,  but  several 
shouts  of  jeering  laughter  daunted  him. 

Clo  waited.  She  knew,  of  old,  what  curiosity 
would  do  when  politeness  failed.  After  a  few 
minutes  the  laughter  subsided,  save  in  sundry 
jeers  hurled,  not  ill-naturedly,  at  the  strange 
lady  by  a  gang  near  the  steps. 

On  the  face  of  one  of  these  Clo  fixed  her  eyes 
suddenly,  and  as  suddenly  spoke  out  in  a  ring- 
ing voice. 

"  That  will  do,  Jim  Ball,"  she  said,  "  you  ought 
to  know  Mark  Hading's  wife  better  than  that. 
Who  saved  your  little  boy?" 

The  very  suddenness  and  sharpness  of  this 
attack,  coming  from  the  lips  of  a  beautiful, 
girlish-looking  "fine  lady,"  had  instant  effect. 

"  Mark  Hading's  wife,  is  you? "  said  the 
scowling  villain.  "So  ye  are,  but  changed  wi* 
fat  living.  Where  's  Mark  Hading?  " 

"  I  'm  not    changed   in   love  of  them  I  lived 


328  Saints  in  Society 

amongst,"  called  she,  over  the  din,  falling  back 
in  her  excitement  into  the  old  vernacular  and 
some  of  the  old  twang. 

"  Hooray!  "  shouted  one,  and  "  Well  said,  lady," 
answered  another.  But  the  repeated  call, 
"  Where  's  Mark  Hading?"  was  growing  in  power 
and  threatening  to  drown  her  voice.  But  lifting 
up  her  head,  and  stepping  a  little  forward,  she 
called  out  in  her  clear,  loud  Cockney  voice,  now 
shrill  again  in  its  old  fashion  and  just  sufficiently 
tainted  with  the  twang  to  command  a  sudden 
attention,  "  I've  come  here  to  tell  you."  Then 
getting  impatient,  she  threw  out  her  daintily- 
gloved  right  hand  and  cried,  "  Look  here,  boys, 
give  us  a  chance  1 "  (N.  B. — She  now  called  it 
"cha-a-a-nce.") 

Anything  less  like  the  quiet,  refined  Clo  of  the 
last  few  years  it  was  impossible  to  imagine. 
Yet  there  was  a  kind  of  gallant  grace  in  the  way 
the  Cockney  abandon  sat  on  one  so  beautiful 
and  stately.  It  was  as  if  Juno  had  suddenly  de- 
veloped slang.  Mingled  with  her  obvious  good- 
humour  and  clear  unconsciousness  of  self  it  had  a 
positive  charm  to  that  weary  crowd,  sick  to  death 
of  abuse  and  disappointment. 

Somehow  the  men  felt  the  charm  and  began 


Saints  in  Society  329 

to  listen,  now  pressing  forward  eagerly  to  hear 
her  words  and  to  see  what  such  a  woman  would 
say. 

"  Brothers  and  sisters,"  she  said,  "  I  am  Mark 
Hading's  wife.  Some  of  you  know  me.  I  was 
one  of  you.  I  am  still.  I  do  what  I  can  for 
your  children;  I  count  them  mine.  I  've  come 
here  to-day,  not  because  any  one  asked  me  to 
come,  but  because  I  love  you  and  believe  in  you, 
and  want  to  help  you."  (It  is  fearful  to  relate 
that  she  now  said  "  you  "  something  like  "  yer.") 
"Mark  Hading  's  away  from  home;  he  cannot 
be  with  you  to-day.  So  I  have  come  in  his 
place  to  read  to  you  his  speech  containing  a  plan 
for  your  relief.  And  when  I  have  read  you  that , 
I  '11  tell  you  of  a  plan  of  my  own." 

She  then  took  out  her  papers  and  proceeded 
gravely  to  read  out  Mark's  carefully-drawn-up 
scheme,  in  a  voice  high,  shrill  and  penetrating, 
full  of  fire  and  emphasis,  and  with  always  that 
winning  Cockney  accent  (to  them),  giving  the 
words  point  and  power  over  a  multitude  to  whom 
it  was  the  normal  language,  and  who  felt  its 
kinship. 

Mark's  speech  was  long,  wordy,  and  intricate, 
but  they  gave  it  perfect  attention.  There  was 


33°  Saints  in  Society 

something  absolutely  compelling  about  that 
new,  loud,  ringing  voice  of  Clo's,  combined  with 
her  striking  beauty  and  stately  dress  and  bearing. 
As  she  stood  there  speaking,  her  head  erect,  her 
eyes  sparkling,  her  breast  heaving,  her  slightly 
dimpled  chin  thrown  proudly  back,  and  an  eager 
smile  on  her  short-featured,  queenly  face,  she 
somehow  won  every  single  heart  by  the  very 
self-forgetfulness  of  her.  They  loved  her.  She 
stood  for  an  embodiment  of  life  and  health  and 
brave  womanliness  and  beauty,  and  these  poor 
starved  things  looked  upon  her  rapt  as  we  look 
at  a  sudden  blaze  of  sunshine  on  a  dark  Novem- 
ber day,  or  as  wan  old  age  gazes  upon  the  flash- 
ing brilliance  of  a  lovely  child. 

When  Mark's  speech  drew  to  a  close,  full  as  it 
was  of  plans  and  suggestions  showing  time  and 
thought,  their  feelings  were  obviously  mixed. 
Some  caught  on  to  several  of  the  suggestions  in- 
dividually and  jeered  openly.  Others  took  up 
the  thread  and  called  out,"  What  does  he  mean  by 
that,  lady?"  and  "Give  us  the  straight  tip,  lady; 
how  's  that  going  to  work?  "  and  so  on.  But  all 
were  clearly  willing  to  treat  her  well ;  indeed,  her 
presence  was  a  novelty,  and  had  somehow  shed 
a  benediction  about  the  vast  concourse,  for  it 


Saints  in  Society  331 

was  now  undoubtedly  in  a  better  humour,  though 
remaining  sardonic  as  to  Mark's  utterances. 

To  all  these  semi-sneering  questions  she  an- 
swered sedately  enough  that  they  must  make  a 
note  of  their  objections  and  call  a  meeting  for  her 
husband  to  answer  them  in  person.  She  seemed 
to  be  without  fear  or  timidity  of  any  kind. 

"And  if  we  do,"  said  one,  "where  will  he  be 
when  he  's  wanted  ?  "  "  Dancing  after  fine  ladies, ' ' 
rang  out  another  voice,  meanly. 

The  words  touched  on  some  raw  spot  quite 
unconsciously.  She  blushed  painfully,  but  held 
up  her  hand  for  silence. 

"  My  patience,  boys,"  she  said,  growing  angry, 
"  you  give  me  no  time  to  speak.  I  've  read  you 
my  husband's  words,  plans  and  wishes.  Now 
you  Ve  got  to  hear  mine — mine,"  she  said,  almost 
shouting  in  her  determination  to  be  heard. 
She  stamped  her  foot.  Her  indignation  had 
effect.  If  she  had  read  out  Mark's  words  with 
spirit,  her  own  came  pouring  out  like  those  of 
a  prophetess.  She  told  them  briefly  all  she 
knew  of  their  suffering,  their  discontent,  their 
homelessness,  their  hopelessness.  She  told  them 
all  she  felt  when  she  beheld  the  wheels  of 
political  reform  creak  slowly  along,  and 


332  Saints  in  Society 

meanwhile  the  children  dying  by  the  wayside. 
She  told  them,  in  simple  words  (her  words  were 
always  almost  Biblical  in  their  neat  sparseness, 
and  therefore  singularly  telling),  that  those  who 
sat  day  after  day  by  empty  hearths,  pinched 
with  hunger,  and  grey  with  care,  those  who 
had  old,  diseased  children,  and  only  starvation 
and  the  grave  to  look  to,  could  not  wait  any 
longer  for  Governments  to  come  and  go — ay, 
and  promises  to  come  and  go,  she  added — could 
not  live  to  wait  unless  something  were  done  and 
done  quickly.  And  that  something  should  be 
done. 

"Boys,"  she  said  in  her  old  short,  sharp, 
Cockney  fashion,  "  there 's  one  who  loves  you 
and  pities  you  from  her  heart.  There  's  one  of 
the  'great '  that  you  're  so  fond  of  calling  names 
— one  I've  been  with  to-day  but  whose  name  I 
may  not  tell  you — who  has  offered  three  thou- 
sand pounds  of  her  own  to  give  you  work  and 
food  for  the  next  fortnight.  There  's  others 
who  will  follow  her — others  who  will  give  be- 
cause she  leads — and  I  hope  to  find  work  for 
three  months  till  the  spring  comes."  A  huge 
shout  drowned  her  words,  a  shout  of  honest, 
sudden  gratitude.  "Come  again,"  panted  Clo, 


Saints  in  Society  333 

trying  to  be  heard.  "  Committee  to  be  appointed 
by  to-morrow  morning."  Again  shouts.  "Come 
to  me  at  Walworth  Settlement  for  information 
to-morrow."  Again  shouting.  "Boys,  I  wish 
it  was  to-day.  May  God  bless  you!" 

The  mighty  heart-burdened  roar  of  gratitude 
drowned  her  words  at  last,  and  she  had  to  sink 
back,  with  her  hand  clasping  Dorcas's,  into  the 
chair  Mr.  Beatman  now  urged  her  to  take,  with 
a  sudden  break  in  her  voice  and  tears  in  her 
eyes. 

When  at  last  the  great  swelling  "Hurrah," 
which  was  the  poor  multitude's  thanks,  died 
down  a  little,  the  chairman  held  up  his  hand,  and 
after  a  few  kind  words,  hardly  heard,  announced 
the  meeting  closed.  The  police  began  to  urge 
a  quiet  departure,  but  hope  had  now  re-lit  the 
grey  grim  faces,  and  up  rose  that  most  eternal 
and  unquenchable  thing — the  Cockney  wit,  which 
no  misery  can  quite  kill;  that  undying  sense 
of  the  ludicrous  that  makes  the  Cockney  so 
lovable  in  spite  of  all  his  faults.  Jokes  were 
freely  bandied  about,  and  several  gangs  pushed 
to  the  steps  of  the  Monument  and  asked  to 
shake  hands  with  "the  lydy."  But  never  for  a 
moment  did  they  falter  in  their  respect.  Dorcas 


334  Saints  in  Society 

and  Clo  shared  the  burden  of  this  promiscuous 
hand-shaking  till  the  waning  light  and  Clo's 
now  growing  paleness  warned  the  chairman  to 
again  insist  on  their  departure.  The  police 
now  sharply  aiding  him,  this  end  was  at  last 
accomplished.  Mr.  Beatman  beamed  on  Clo 
when  they  had  gone.  His  gratitude  was  almost 
as  deep  as  theirs. 

"You  have  saved  us  from  utter  despair,"  he 
said. 

"Come  to  me  early  to-morrow,  Mr.  Beat- 
man," she  said,  "or  stay — this  evening  if  you 
can.  I  want  your  advice  about  my  new  scheme, 
and  the  committee.  Of  course  you  will  join 
us?  Lord  Henry  Vade  will  be  one  of  us.  Do 
come  if  you  can." 

He  consented  eagerly,  put  her  in  her  cab, 
and  she  drove  home  with  Dorcas.  But  at  the 
door  Dorcas  would  not  come  in;  she  insisted 
on  returning  to  Walworth  to  her  Sunday  even- 
ing duties.  She  was  so  careful  not  to  enter 
that  she  might  have  known  Mark  had  virtually 
forbidden  her  the  house.  Perhaps  she  guessed. 

Then  Clo,  bidding  her  good-bye,  went  indoors 
and  gave  a  few  quiet  orders,  went  up  stairs  to 
her  own  room,  her  eyes  shining  like  stars. 


Saints  in  Society  335 

Locked  her  door,  did  a  very  feminine  thing, 
went  and  looked  at  herself  in  the  glass.  Took 
off  her  hat  and  coat,  and  threw  herself  down  on 
her  bed  in  a  flood  of  passionate,  hopeless  tears. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

WHEN  the  papers  came  out  the  next  morning, 
Mrs.  Hading's  exploit  was  blazoned  forth 
for  all  who  cared  to  read.  It  caused  a  tremendous 
sensation.  It  was  not  the  kind  of  adventure 
which  journalists  of  the  "dramatic  episode" 
type  were  exactly  likely  to  treat  with  reserve, 
and  of  its  sensational  character  enough  was 
made  to  have  turned  many  women  grey.  Her 
very  dress  and  complexion  were  described  in 
terms  worthy  of  a  fashion  book. 

Crawshay,  in  his  bachelor  town  house,  read 
it,  over  his  breakfast,  and  said  "That  woman 
is  divine!"  and  "Those  brutes  ought  to  be  had 
up  for  libel!"  in  the  same  breath.  He  got  up, 
and  calling  for  his  horse,  with  a  profuse  amount 
of  what  the  footman  called  "lankwidge,"  simply 
tore  around  the  Row  till  he  was  nearly  blinded 
by  a  racing  east  wind,  not  staying  his  wild  course 
till  he  had  all  but  killed  a  policeman,  and  almost 

taken  a  flying  leap  over  a  truculent  motor  car. 

336 


Saints  in  Society  337 

Lady  Listower,  at  her  country  place,  Mere- 
hames,  read  it  over  also  at  breakfast  (in  bed, 
over  a  pink  satin  eider-down  quilt  and  some  cocoa, 
it  must  be  admitted). 

"My  dear!"  she  exclaimed  aloud,  though 
there  was  none  by  to  hear,  save  her  maid,  rum- 
maging in  a  distant  wardrobe.  "  That  girl!  What 
a  thing!  Well,  and  serves  that  horrible  hus- 
band of  hers  right.  The  tiresome,  chattering 
creature,  with  his  abominable  ties  and  bad  shoot- 
ing, and  worse  temper.  I  'm  not  sorry  for  him. 
I  shall  write  and  congratulate  him.  He  will 
look  small.  Common  person — the  way  he  treated 
poor  Henry  over  that  stupid  paper.  The  in- 
gratitude of  the  monster.  But  this  girl  speaking 
to  mobs,  and  all  that!  Well,  I  should  n't  wonder 
if  other  women  took  it  up  now,  too — she  's  quite 
beautiful  enough  to  make  it  a  mode.  But  I  pity 
the  mobs,  that 's  all."  She  turned  the  paper  to 
the  light.  "So  he's  ill?"  Then,  quite  inconse- 
quently,  "Where  's  Vera,  by-the-bye?  I  haven't 
heard  from  her  since  she  went  to  the  Henleys — 
that 's  a  week  ago.  Really,  the  way  that  girl 
treats  me  is  shameful.  Most  ungrateful.  I  '11 
write  her  one  of  my  worst  letters.  She  's  had 
too  few  lately.  Oh! — here,"  she  glanced  down 


338  Saints  in  Society 

a  column  of  social  chat  and  her  eye  caught  a 
paragraph : 

"Mr.  and  Lady  Ulma  Prinz  are  entertaining 
a  small  party  at  Redaway  Abbey,  Renby,  Yorks, 
the  seat  of  the  Duke  of  Puirminster,  which 
they  have  taken  for  the  shooting  season.  The 
party  comprises  the  following  distinguished 
guests:  Colonel  Sir  Sholto  Oban-Filkes,  Mrs. 
Jack  Murphy-Slaughter,  Lady  Veronica  Vade, 
and  Mr.  Mark  Hading,  M.P." 

Lady  Listower's  "My  dear!"  on  reading  this 
paragraph  swelled  to  an  actual  bellow,  and  even 
the  maid,  hardened  to  such  ejaculations,  came 
running  forward  at  its  loud  tocsin  summons. 

"That  set!"  said  Lady  Listower— " Sholto 
Oban-Filkes  and  that  unspeakable  Winnie  Mur- 
phy-Slaughter —  Jumpie  Slaughter,  or  what- 
ever they  call  the  creature.  And  that  Mark 
Hading — that  poor  girl's  awful  husband.  And 
such  a  hostess! — Ulma  Prinz  with  her  little 
red-nosed  Belgian- Jew  husband  and  her  repu- 
tation. What  is  Vera  dreaming  of?  Some- 
thing must  be  done  at  once!  This  is  terrible!" 

Lifting  up  her  voice,  her  ladyship  loudly 
demanded  to  be  dressed  and  to  set  about  her 
business. 


Saints  in  Society  339 

The  morning  paper  found  Lord  Henry  at 
Chassingham,  where  in  this  fine  cold  winter 
morning  he  was  lounging  in  the  hall  before 
breakfast,  very  fresh  and  cool  and  transparent- 
looking  after  a  cold  bath  and  a  morning  race 
with  some  of  the  kennel  pets.  On  reading  the 
account  of  Clo's  speech  this  gentleman  whistled 
long  and  low.  That  was  really  all;  except 
that  he  called  the  passing  footman  to  bring  him 
a  time-table  at  once,  and  in  an  hour  had  de- 
spatched himself  to  London. 

The  world  in  general  made  caustic  comments, 
and  several  of  the  older  Tory  papers  were  rather 
weakly  rude  about  "ladies"  and  public  speak- 
ing, and  women's  franchise,  and  the  usual  "  What 
are  we  coming  to?"  cry.  They  even  brought 
out  of  the  dusky  corners  of  their  imaginations,  or 
what  old  Tory  papers  call  imaginations,  a  familiar 
if  tiresome  old  bogey,  the  typical  strong-minded 
female,  and  endowed  Clo  by  inference  with  hob- 
nailed boots,  divided  skirts,  pince-nez,  and  short 
hair.  These  shafts  can  be  survived,  happily. 

For  the  time  every  one  was  talking  of  the  ap- 
pearance of  this  "  charming  lady  "  on  a  mass  meet- 
ing platform,  and  she  had  to  give  her  servants* 
stern  orders  to  refuse  admittance  absolutely  to 


340  Saints  in  Society 

interviewers  and  journalists  who  besieged  her  for 
"impressions." 

She  was  busy  enough.  The  appointment  of  the 
committee  had  to  be  gone  through  like  light- 
ning to  enable  her  to  keep  her  promise  of  affording 
relief  on  the  Monday  after  the  speech.  It  was  of 
necessity  informal.  Lady  Highgate  permitted  her 
name  to  be  used,  but  forbade  her  share  in  the  sub- 
scription list  to  be  publicly  announced.  She 
called  her  gift  Clo's — she  would  not  have  it  named 
as  her  own.  Mr.  Beatman  made  a  handsome  do- 
nation, and  Lord  Henry,  who  arrived  during  the 
forenoon,  another.  Crawshay  sent  a  thousand,  to 
be  unanimous,  and  half  a  dozen  generous  women, 
hearing  of  the  affair  and  knowing  Clo  and  her 
friends,  sent  offerings  and  permitted  themselves 
to  be  enrolled  as  members  of  the  committee.  The 
thing  grew  with  extraordinary  rapidity  in  a  few 
hours.  Vade  was,  by  common  consent,  elected 
president,  and  he  and  Beatman,  being  old  hands 
at  such  work,  soon  sketched  out  a  plan  of  a  relief 
campaign  to  be  temporarily  adhered  to  at  any 
rate;  and  by  noon  the  workers  at  the  Settlement 
were  able  to  dispense  food  tickets  payable  to  the 
local  tradesmen,  and  to  make  appointments  for 
work  at  a  reasonable  wage  for  the  next  day,  Tues- 


Saints  in  Society  341 

day.  Of  course  it  meant  hours  of  hard  slaving  for 
all  concerned,  and  Clo,  Vade,  and  one  of  the  more 
energetic  ladies  of  the  committee,  a  Mrs.  Foster, 
at  least,  had  no  lunch  or  refreshment  of  any  kind 
till  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  The  place  was 
fairly  besieged  by  the  hungry  crowd,  well-be- 
haved enough,  it  is  true,  but  none  the  less  pressing 
on  that  account. 

Crawshay  arrived  at  the  Settlement  about  noon, 
after  calling  at  Queen's  Gate  and  hearing  from  the 
butler  what  was  on  foot,  and  his  steady  practical 
methods  of  dealing  with  the  intricate  business 
arrangements  were  of  the  greatest  assistance. 
When,  after  hours  of  work,  the  ragged  numbers 
outside  began  visibly  to  lessen  and  the  noise  be- 
came less;  when  the  Settlement  deaconesses  had 
ceased  trotting  to  and  fro  incessantly  under  the 
guidance  of  Dorcas  and  Crawshay,  who  organised 
the  actual  handing  out  of  the  tickets  and  work 
coupons  (no  light  business),  and  at  the  end  of  the 
day's  work  the  self-appointed  secretaries  were 
busy  counting  up  and  entering  the  names  of  those 
enrolled  for  work  and  relief  and  writing  in  rough 
ledgers,  the  outer  door  was  opened  suddenly,  the 
noise  of  a  motor  snorting  was  heard  outside,  and 
lo  and  behold!  Hading  entered  the  committee 


342  Saints  in  Society 

room.  At  the  threshold  he  stood  and  surveyed 
the  queer  scene.  In  this  he  is  perhaps  to  be 
excused. 

Vade,  very  untidy,  for  him,  was  glancing  over 
sheets  of  names  written  in  violet  pencil  and  ob- 
serving also  that  it  had  covered  his  cuffs  with  its 
sticky  greeny-blue  signals.  Some  of  his  light 
hair  was  standing  on  end  and  he  looked  pale  and 
fagged.  Mrs.  Foster,  a  thin  lady  whom  fatigue 
made  red  and  shiny,  leant  over  a  desk  with  Beat- 
man  arguing  about  some  entries,  a  chinchilla  toque 
far  back  and  on  one  side  of  her  head.  Her  hands, 
good  kind  "  loaf -giver,"  were  now  very  dirty  and 
her  grey  dress  dabbed  with  ink.  Crawshay,  looking 
worried,  as  only  rather  a  fat  man  can  look  worried, 
was  poring  over  some  cheques  and  a  bank  book, 
running  his  fingers  through  his  red  curls,  and  say- 
ing inarticulate  things  to  nobody  about  a  whisky- 
and-soda  being  about  as  likely  a  thing  to  be  got  in 
the  moon  as  here,  and  other  irrelevant  remarks. 

Clo,  very  pale  and  worn  out,  but  still  eager,  sat 
in  the  far  corner  hurriedly  discussing  some  final 
details  with  Dorcas.  The  floor  was  littered  with 
endless  bits  of  paper;  the  bare  desks  and  forms 
were  dirty.  The  high  gas  jets  flickered  in  the  rush 
of  the  east  wind  and  caught  the  oleograph  texts 


Saints  in  Society  343 

on  the  walls  with  sputtering  shadows.  Over  all  the 
place  hung  an  atmosphere  of  applied  charity  and 
violet  pencil,  two  things  abhorred  by  Mark. 

"What  on  earth  are  all  you  people  doing?" 
he  called  out  in  mock  playfulness  and  scarcely 
disguised  sneering.  His  manner  was  not  pleasant 
— for  a  culprit. 

"  Waiting  for  a  late  lunch,  old  chap,"  said  Craw- 
shay,  rolling  up  a  philosophic  eye  but  refraining 
to  approach  the  fallen  great  one.  "  Whiskies-and- 
sodas  slow  in  coming.  What  a  life!  " 

"Ah,  Hading,"  said  Vade,  with  imperturbable 
amiability,  and  going  on  inspecting  his  cuffs,  "  you 
have  n't  read  your  morning  paper.  Otherwise 
you  would  be  aware  of  our  labours  for  the  unpleas- 
ant dirty  man  to  whom  we  are  all  so  devoted." 

Mrs.  Foster  bowed  coldly  in  Hading's  direction, 
refraining  to  permit  him  her  eyes.  But  this  move- 
ment finished  the  chinchilla  toque,  already  peril- 
ously disposed,  and  it  falling  off  at  this  juncture, 
she  forgot  her  hauteur  in  her  efforts  to  scramble 
after  it  in  the  heaps  of  bits  of  paper,  and  to  get 
it  placed  again  right  end  foremost.  Beatman 
alone  went  forward  and  shook  hands  with  Hading, 
looking  in  his  eyes  with  a  stern  and  steely  glance 
that  belied  the  sociable  act. 


344  Saints  in  Society 

"  I  trust  you  are  recovered  f  "  he  said  pointedly. 
Beatman  was  a  square-set  man  with  a  "  Newgate 
fringe,"  a  bushy  fringe  of  whiskers  under  his  clean- 
shaven chin.  He  looked  at  you  over  the  top  of 
his  spectacles,  very  hard,  in  a  manner  reminis- 
cent of  a  reformatory  honorary  secretary  or  a 
police-court  magistrate.  This  was  not  calculated 
to  mollify  Hading. 

"Recovered?  Yes,"  he  said  shortly,  looking 
round  him  with  defiance.  "I  've  motored  back 
to  see  to  this  affair  of  a  relief  scheme."  He  raised 
his  voice.  "  Thanks,  all  of  you,  for  all  you  've 
done  to  help  my  wife.  I  '11  see  to  things  now 
myself." 

The  moment  for  this  bold  announcement  was 
the  worst  he  could  have  chosen.  And  his  manner 
of  making  it  was  worse.  He  stood  in  the  middle 
of  the  littered  room  in  his  fawn  motor  coat,  look- 
ing the  picture  of  moneyed  comfort  if  ill-humour. 
And  he  made  one  horrible  little  slip  which  revealed 
his  past  painfully — he  forgot  to  remove  his  hat. 
Mrs.  Foster,  in  bowing  to  him,  had  unintentionally 
removed  hers ;  he  had  not  taken  the  hint  from  that 
good  lady. 

Vade  looked  hard  at  him  the  while  he  rubbed 
his  violet-pencilled  cuffs  vainly  with  india  rubber. 


Saints  in  Society  345 

"  I  see,"  he  said  coldly,  "  you  will  then,  in  that 
case,  have  to  reappoint  your  committee.  I  un- 
derstood that  this  was  Mrs.  Hading's  work — she, 
I  believe,  made  the  first  contribution  and  her 
clever  brain  planned  out  the  scheme.  Up  to  the 
present  it  is  a  great  success.  But  if  Mrs.  Hading 
chooses  to  reorganise  her  plans  we  are  all,  I  am 
sure,  at  her  disposal.  She  is  our  leader." 

The  prominence  he  gave  to  Clo  was  the  final  stab 
for  Mark,  already  furious  with  his  wife. 

"What's  your  capital?"  he  said. 

"  Five  thousand,  at  present,"  said  Crawshay, 
who  was  constituted  banker,  "  if  you  like  to  call 
it  capital.  We  called  it  charity,  don't  you  know." 

"  Pooh! — I  can  buy  that  up  and  double  it  to- 
morrow— and  will  too,"  said  Mark. 

The  rudeness  of  this  arrogant  offer  fell  like  a 
bomb  in  the  little  band  of  tired  workers.  They 
were  all  hungry,  worn  out,  and  injured :  they  had 
all  given  generously  of  time  and  labour  and  money. 
Mark  in  his  hat,  with  his  black,  angry  eyes,  stand- 
ing blustering  in  their  midst,  did  not  cut  the  stately 
figure  he  intended. 

Clo,  who  had  turned  paler  at  his  entrance  over 
in  her  corner,  now  rose  up  and  came  towards  him 
and  murmured  a  few  polite  words,  hurriedly  ex- 


346  Saints  in  Society 

plaining  the  kindness  of  her  friends  and  suggesting 
some  plan  of  future  discussion  at  a  more  reason- 
able season.  Mark  looked  at  her  with  a  nasty 
glance  as  though  her  face  roused  some  malignant 
memory. 

"  Thanks,"  he  said  aloud  for  all  to  hear,  "  I  can 
manage  my  own  affairs  best." 

Vade  gave  up  his  cuffs  as  a  bad  job.  Going 
over  to  the  hook  on  which  it  hung  he  took  down 
his  dandified  and  be-waisted  overcoat,  into  which 
Crawshay  helped  him.  He  went  to  Mrs.  Foster 
and  asked  her  with  great  deference  which  way 
she  went  and  whether  he  could  be  of  any  assist- 
ance with  his  brougham.  That  lady,  in  a  tremor 
of  indignation  at  Hading,  was  pulling  her  gloves 
on  over  her  now  inky  and  dingy  hands.  She 
thanked  him  with  a  pitiful  little  forced  smile,  but 
said  her  carriage  was  waiting  for  her.  She  looked 
ready  for  tears — indignant  tears. 

So  they  all  went,  as  it  were  dismissed,  but 
said  good-bye  to  Clo  very  kindly.  They  all  pitied 
her  from  their  hearts — yet  who  could  show  it? 
She  thanked  them  brokenly,  with  a  little  mist  of 
tears  in  her  eyes,  standing  in  the  litter  of  her  great 
work,  by  the  side  of  her  husband — her  great 
husband. 


Saints  in  Society  347 

"  I  think  we  did  a  little  good,  eh,  Mrs.  Hading?  " 
said  Vade.  "  You  can  now  carry  on  your  scheme 
swimmingly,  I  hope.  I  wish  you  every  possible 
success.  Count  on  me  if  you  want  me." 

Crawshay  muttered  something  equally  non- 
committal, and  they  came  away  together.  When 
they  had  got  clean  out  of  the  place  and  were 
spinning  along  at  a  good  pace,  Vade  said, — 

"  Hading  has  somehow  gone  to  the  dogs.  What 
is  it?" 

Crawshay  paused.  The  answer,  in  full,  might 
have  been  awkward  to  Vera's  brother. 

"  Mainly  morphia,"  he  said. 

"Good  heavens!"  said  Lord  Henry,  aghast, 
"  are  you  sure  of  that?  Never! " 

"  I  know  it,"  said  Crawshay.  "  Nerves  and  all 
that,  of  course.  It 's  gone  on  now  for  some  time. 
His  friends — he  's  got  into  a  beastly  set — do  no- 
thing to  help  him." 

Vade  whistled. 

"  Then  God  help  his  wife,"  he  said. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THE  next  day's  morning  papers  brought  an- 
other shock  to  one  or  two  people,  though 
the  larger  world  knew  too  little  of  the  matter 
generally  to  understand  the  bearings  of  an  an- 
nouncement which  appeared  not  only  in  Hading's 
papers  (he  now  owned  three)  but  in  most  of  the 
others.  It  was  to  the  effect  that  the  great  La- 
bour member,  Mr.  Mark  Hading,  had  started  a 
fund  to  meet  the  pressing  wants  of  the  great  mass 
of  unemployed  working  men  in  the  east  and  south- 
east of  London,  and  had  already  commenced  op- 
erations for  relief  on  a  large  and  carefully  organ- 
ised scale. 

He  headed  his  list  with  £5000  given  by  himself, 
and  notified  the  receipt  of  large  sums:  £3000  in 
the  name  of  his  wife,  and  £1000  in  Sir  Samuel 
Crawshay's,  and  so  on  with  a  string  of  well-known 
names,  amongst  these  Mr.  Panhard  Vannerheim 
and  Mr.  Moses  Prinz.  He  asked  for  further  sub- 
scriptions and  held  himself  responsible  for  the 

348 


Saints  in  Society  349 

issuing   of  careful  balance  sheets  of  all  expend- 
iture. 

The  scheme  took  the  fancy  of  the  public  by  the 
very  immensity  of  it.  And  for  the  next  two  or 
three  days  this  man  and  his  vast  philanthropy 
were  talked  of  on  every  side.  All  England  blaz- 
oned with  it.  If  Vade  and  Crawshay  thought 
much  they  said  little.  There  are  moments  when 
one  is  beyond  speech — except  it  be,  as  in  Craw- 
shay's  case,  "lankwidge." 

Happily,  too,  Clo  was  a  silent  woman .  She  could 
have  said  much  at  this  juncture  had  she  had  the 
power  of  self-expression .  Failing  in  that  constitu- 
tionally, except  in  very  rare  cases  of  excitement 
on  as  the  memorable  Sunday  in  Trafalgar  Square, 
she  simply  withdrew  into  a  sort  of  shell  of  frozen 
silence,  which  was,  let  us  admit  it,  quite  half  won- 
der and  half  despair.  Following  this,  Mark's  con- 
temptuous offer  to  let  the  committee  stand  as  it 
was  met  with  a  string  of  negatives  from  the  ill- 
treated  members.  They  all  withdrew  except 
Crawshay,  and  Hading  had  to  appoint  a  new  set 
of  his  own,  including  Vannerheim  and  Prinz — 
perhaps  more  influential  names  in  a  moneyed 
sense  if  black  sheep  in  a  social. 

Crawshay  would  not  let  his  post  of  treasurer  go 


35°  Saints  in  Society 

easily,  and  Hading  forbore  to  quarrel  with  a  man 
of  his  influence  and  wealth  combined  with  his 
known  business  ability.  Vade  he  regarded  differ- 
ently. He  had  ill-treated  Vade — repaid  him  for 
his  lift  in  life  with  gross  insolence  and  ingratitude. 
The  sage  George  Herbert  once  said,  "the  offender 
never  forgives";  that  expresses  Mark's  attitude. 
Besides,  just  now,  he  did  not  want  Vera's  brother 
always  dogging  his  footsteps,  for  reasons  quite  of 
his  own.  So  Vade  went,  and  Beatman  (the  latter 
in  sheer  righteous  indignation,  a  sentiment  New- 
gate fringes  can  express  to  perfection),  and  Mrs. 
Foster,  and  the  other  ladies  of  Clo's  convening;  all 
except  one  withdrew  haughtily.  Crawshay  was 
tackled  by  those  who  knew  something  as  to  his 
adherence  to  such  a  cause. 

"  When  I  see  a  pack  of  bounders  and  bluster- 
ers," said  he  in  his  stolid  fashion,  "  swaggering  into 
the  earnings  of  other  folks '  work  I  don't  turn  tail 
and  run.  I  sit  tight  and  fight  'em.  They  don't 
want  me  there,  but  there  I'll  stay  and  see  things 
done  on  the  square."  To  himself  he  added, 
whether  rightly  or  wrongly,  "That  angel  girl 
sha'  n't  have  to  apologise  to  me  for  being  married 
to  a  brute  and  a  bounder.  I  '11  spare  her  that." 

For  Clo  had  had  to  write  notes  to  all  her  kind 


Saints  in  Society  351 

supporters  when  the  split  came — the  most  awk- 
ward notes.  To  apologise  for  a  husband  who  has 
fallen  off  a  pedestal  is  not  an  easy  matter  to  one  so 
loyal  as  she.  Vade  read  her  pathetically  loyal 
little  letter  between  the  lines  and  smiled  half 
humorously,  half  sadly. 

"  I  must  readjust  all  my  theories  of  human 
nature,"  he  said  to  himself;  "  I  once  called  that 
little  woman  a  '  little  Cockney  cat.'  She  is,  after 
all,  a  brick.  Her  husband  is  the  pinchbeck." 

Beatman  simply  snorted  on  receipt  of  his .  Mrs. 
Foster,  as  became  a  woman,  had  her  own  line. 
She  called.  During  her  call  she  hinted  innumer- 
able pitying  things.  Clo,  at  first  effusively  sorry 
for  the  dear  woman's  trouble,  and  sincerely  grate- 
ful for  her  help,  as  the  note  of  pity  swelled,  grew 
colder.  And  slowly,  as  some  golden  sequins  on  a 
butterfly  in  Mrs.  Foster's  toque  began  to  enlarge 
and  appear  to  wag  against  some  blotting-paper 
coloured  pink  roses  in  the  same  erection — in  the 
amazing  manner  that  offensive  people's  clothes 
and  facial  faults  do  enlarge  in  the  process  of  an- 
noying one — Clo  withdrew  into  displeased  reserve. 
When  this  at  last  dawned  on  Mrs.  Foster  she  rose 
to  go,  but  before  she  went,  said, — 

"  Ah,  dear  Mrs.  Hading,  we  shall  see  Mr.  Had- 


352  Saints  in  Society 

ing's  name  on  the  list  of  Birthday  honours  yet. 
He  is  a  very  great  man.  He  will  be  greater  yet." 

Clo  smiled  distantly  as  she  faced  her  visitor's 
malicious  eyes. 

"  We  have  such  different  ideas  of  greatness,  dear 
Mrs.  Foster,"  she  said,  and  had  the  best  of  it.  But 
she  felt  the  sting  of  the  mean  hint  all  the  more  be- 
cause it  rang  with  a  possible  truth. 

Lady  Listower,  hearing  things  from  Henry, 
called  immediately  after  the  sequins  departed. 
She  rustled  in,  corpulent  and  fierce  looking,  and 
seized  Clo  by  both  hands. 

"  My  dear, ' '  she  said,  "all  men  are  beasts.  All 
the  world  is  the  same.  What  a  life!  Horrible 
monsters.  So  long  as  those  sad  creatures  in  the 
East  get  fed,  who  cares?  /  don't.  It's  your  good 
work — let  those  dull,  boring  men  get  the  glory  if 
they  like.  That  is  their  way — those  ugly  million- 
aires, like  frogs,  all  sitting  round  and  enjoying 
the  praise  not  one  of  them  has  earned.  Never 
mind,  my  soul.  You're  a  very  pretty,  sweet, 
clever  woman,  and  there  's  another  world  where  I 
am  convinced  original  souls  will  be  appreciated 
and  not  mixed  up  with  Pannerheims — no,  Van- 
nerheims — is  n't  that  the  wretch's  name? — and 
such  sets.  I  always  say  that  to  myself  when  I  see 


Saints  in  Society  353 

my  complexion  looking  hideous.  After  all,  we 
are  n't  known  here  as  we  ought  to  be — we  're  mis- 
understood." She  sat  down  panting. 

Clo  was  grateful  to  her  for  her  tactful  avoidance 
of  allusion  to  Mark,  in  spite  of  the  slight  apparent 
confusion  in  her  philosophy. 

"  Vera,"  continued  the  great  lady,  "  is  bother- 
ing me  dreadfully.  She  is  so  mysterious.  Have 
you  seen  her  lately?  "  She  said  it  so  pointedly 
that  Clo  blushed  in  spite  of  herself. 

"  No,"  she  answered,  "  we  have  not  met  for 
months." 

Lady  Listower  looked  at  her  under  her  lashes. 

"Vera  shall  marry,"  she  continued.  "  I  must 
make  her  father  insist  on  it.  There  is  a  man  who 
has  wanted  her  for  years.  Dull  but  rich — old- 
tiresome — gout  in  the  head — dyed  moustache. 
Still,  most  devoted.  Good  family.  She  is  getting 
talked  about  just  now — positively  talked  about — 
with  whom  do  you  think  ?  "  She  paused  and 
looked  at  Clo,  who  sat  quite  still  and  white. 
' '  Why — with  Stillingfleet, "  she  concluded  triumph- 
antly. 

"  Of  course,"  went  on  her  ladyship,  "  an  honour 
for  Stillingfleet  and  all  that.  But  really  most 
annoying  to  me.  After  this  I  shall  keep  a  close 

33 


354  .    Saints  in  Society 

watch  on  her — no  more  visits  to  country  houses 
under  the  chaperonage  of  shady  hostesses!  The 
idea ! — and  to  flirt  with  a  secretary !  The  woman 
is  mad,  quite  mad!  " 

Clo  recognised  the  kindness  lying  behind  this 
tirade,  and  could  only  hold  her  friend's  hand 
affectionately.  This  proud  woman,  with  her 
haughty  name  and  reputation  for  selfish  exclu- 
siveness,  had  never  been  anything  but  angelic- 
ally kind  to  her.  Just  now  she  valued  kindness 
very  deeply. 

As  the  months  went  on  Mark's  health  began  to 
give  serious  trouble.  The  healthy  colour  that  had 
so  aided  his  fine  appearance  in  the  first  years  of 
his  success  had  now  completely  faded,  and  his  fea- 
tures wore  a  loosened  look  as  if  the  facial  muscles 
had  weakened.  His  stoutness  increased  but  with- 
out the  appearance  of  health,  and  he  looked  flabby 
and  lined  and  dull  about  the  eyes.  "  Overwork," 
said  his  friends.  "  Hard  living,"  said  his  enemies. 
"Too  much  success,"  said  the  failures.  "A fail- 
ure," said  the  successes. 

In  the  autumn  he  sent  in  his  resignation  to  his 
constituency.  His  doctor  advised  foreign  travel — 
a  motor  tour  across  Europe.  He  resigned  his 
seat  on  those  grounds.  He  kept  his  hand  in  how- 


Saints  in  Society  355 

ever,  with  his  charity  scheme,  and  this,  together 
with  his  immense  newspaper  labours,  kept  him 
busy.  His  wife  helped  him  at  the  Settlement  but 
her  name  did  not  appear  in  that  connection  so  far 
as  the  great  world  was  concerned;  only  the  poor 
knew  who  really  did  the  work,  and  even  they,  being 
but  human,  acquired  an  instinctive  respect  for 
the  man  who  paid  the  cheques.  Everywhere  he 
was  lauded  as  the  great  philanthropist,  England's 
coming  man,  and  his  wonderful  if  unworkable 
schemes  for  the  abiding  social  conditions  which 
appeared  from  time  to  time  in  his  newspapers  at- 
tracted the  admiring  attention  of  all  who  adore 
the  blatantly  obvious — and  these  are  legion. 

He  started  for  his  tour  alone.  His  wife  was 
to  remain  in  charge  of  the  slum  work  for  a  month 
or  two,  and  was  to  join  him  at  Dinan  in  the  spring. 
That  was  the  arrangement.  His  strange  inertia 
where  she  was  concerned  had  become  proverbial 
now.  She  was  strangely  used  to  it,  and  did  not 
question  it.  She  had  grown  so  self-contained 
owing  to  it  (that  sort  of  trouble  seems  to  either 
eternally  seal  or  eternally  open  a  woman  's  lips), 
that  she  had  not  a  woman  friend  who  dare  question 
her  upon  it,  a  wonderful  state  of  affairs  in  the  case 
of  a  gentle-mannered  grass  widow.  There  had 


356  Saints  in  Society 

been  one  "scene"  between  them  over  her  Trafal- 
gar Square  speech,  when  Mark  had  utterly  lost  all 
control  of  himself.  She  had  said  little  in  reply 
beyond  the  words  "I  did  it  for  the  people's  sake." 

"  Yes, ' '  he  sneered,  "  you  pious  women  always 
have  such  lofty  reasons  for  your  self-glorification. 
Why  was  Crawshay  in  it?" 

"  Why?  I  don't  know,  except  that  he  is  kind, ' ' 
she  said  wonderingly. 

"  Yes,  very  kind, ' '  said  he  mockingly. 

"They  all  were,"  went  on  Clo,  sadly.  "Mrs. 
Foster  was — poor  thing,  how  she  toiled!  And 
Lord  Henry  and  all  of  them.  Why  do  you  look 
like  that?  Do  you  doubt  their  motives?" 

"  Oh,  no, '  *  he  said,  "I  don't  doubt  the  motives 
of  any  of  your  masculine  friends." 

But  the  sneer  fell  short,  the  victim  being  gently 
stupid — one  of  the  ironies  of  destiny  of  many  good 
sneers.  There  is  no  armour  against  these  shafts 
equal  to  an  innocent  mind  and  a  pair  of  soft  eyes. 

She  was  left  mainly  with  Crawshay,  so  far  as  the 
work  was  concerned,  and  work  now  was  what  she 
lived  for.  She  dare  not  think  of  other  things. 
He  was  unfailing  in  his  attendance  at  the  Settle- 
ment ;  he  was  always  at  his  post,  always  assiduous 
in  his  quiet  way,  always  kind  and  always  business- 


Saints  in  Society  357 

like.  No  one  could  find  fault  with  his  treat- 
ment of  this  lonely  lady  whose  cause  he  so  devout- 
ly followed — he  was  a  burning  knight-errant  with 
the  non-compromising  manners  of  a  lift-man  or  a 
family  doctor.  His  calm  stability  was  his  saving 
chance.  Because  of  it  he  was  trusted,  confided  in, 
made  a  friend  of;  this  was  joy  to  him,  but  it  was 
a  joy  a  little  mixed  with  the  knowledge  that  he 
counted  very  much  as  a  male  Dorcas  in  the  lady's 
mind.  You  cannot  have  things  every  way. 

Nevertheless,  there  were  people  who  began  to 
talk,  or  rather  twitter,  as  the  months  went  on  and 
Hading  did  not  return.  Clo  had  made  herself 
just  prominent  enough  on  that  memorable  Sunday 
to  rank  in  the  world's  category  as  enough  of  a  de- 
finite personality  to  attack.  Her  prettiness  made 
her  in  any  case  a  mark  for  any  idle  woman's  ill- 
humour  and  spleen — that  goes  without  saying. 
But  prettiness  and  capacity,  as  she  had  suddenly 
shown  on  that  day,  combined  with  unimpeachable 
character,  were  things  naturally  to  draw  the  spite 
of  the  under  world  of  feminine  busybodies  and  the 
hang-dog  gang  of  feeble- witted  idle  men  who  slunk 
in  their  train  and  giggled  weakly  in  their  drawing- 
rooms.  So  that  a  mean  little  wind  of  vague  gossip 
got  up  about  her  daily  attendance  at  her  charity 


358  Saints  in  Society 

work  and  the  almost  daily  attendance  of  the  treas- 
urer, Crawshay. 

And  in  the  salons  of  other  feminine  philanthro- 
pists, mean-looking  creatures  in  terrible  toques 
and  bonnets,  creatures  perspiring  over  tea  and 
gush  in  a  most  unbecoming  fashion,  laid  their  heads 
together  and  said  some  things,  and  giggled  some, 
and  sniffed  others,  and  coughed  others ;  in  this  way 
the  little  wind  of  scandal  grew  in  volume,  at  any 
rate  in  those  centres  of  charitable  activity  where 
the  members  met  mainly  to  talk  one  another  down, 
drink  tea,  and  look  extremely  plain  in  very  much 
over-bedecked  costumes  bought  in  bits  at  sales. 

Mark,  before  leaving  town,  had  worked  day  and 
night  at  a  scheme  for  the  colonisation  of  the  unem- 
ployed on  an  immense  scale,  and  had  succeeded  in 
drafting  out  in  smart  business  form  a  plan  built 
mainly  on  the  floating  ideas  of  deputations  of  so- 
cialist Utopians  who  had  recently  waited  on  the 
Prime  Minister,  and  respectively  on  all  the  other 
individuals  in  the  State  who  shortly  hoped  to  be- 
come the  Prime  Minister.  Hading  had  grasped 
the  practical  possibilities  of  such  ideas  and  re- 
jected the  impracticable  with  a  stroke  of  almost 
his  old  genius,  and  had  drawn  up  and  promulgated 
a  kind  of  propaganda  strikingly  like  a  solution  of 


Saints  in  Society  359 

all  the  difficulties  besetting  the  country.  He  had 
brought  his  ideas  into  practical  use  already  as  re- 
gards the  men  assisted  by  his  own  now  celebrated 
Settlement,  and  several  hundreds  had  already  been 
packed  off  to  an  estate  he  had  secured  in  South 
Africa  for  that  purpose  and  for  the  purpose  of 
proving  an  object  lesson  of  his  views  to  the 
country. 

Publicly  he  was  at  the  height  of  his  fame. 
He  was  now  the  most-talked-of  man  in  England, 
and  his  wealth  had  increased  enormously,  whilst 
his  three  immense  newspapers  completed  the 
wide  circle  of  his  power. 

England  had  ceased  to  use  the  prefix  to  his  name 
— she  can  do  no  more  than  that  for  her  best.  He 
was  Hading  now,  pure  and  simple.  He  would 
live  in  history,  then.  Adding  to  a  man's  prefix 
is  a  far  less  signal  honour  than  robbing  him  of 
it.  To  dub  him  "Sir"  cannot  approach  the  glory 
of  leaving  him  without  any  handle  at  all,  or  the 
alternative  of  a  really  insultingly  familiar  nick- 
name— perhaps  about  the  highest  honour  of  all. 
To  be  called  "  Pam, "  or  "  Dizzy, "  or  "  Joe  "  in  the 
street  means  true  glory. 

But  Hading  was  certain  for  his  place  in  theBirth- 
day  honours,  and  in  order  to  impress  the  surbubs, 


360  Saints  in  Society 

it  would  be  within  his  policy  to  accept  the  handle 
he  was  now  strong  enough  to  do  without.  He 
would  condescend  to  a  baronetcy,  it  was  whispered 
by  those  who  knew  him — a  knighthood  he  would 
not  look  at  twice.  He  was  the  great  saviour  of  a 
social  crisis — he  had  stepped  in  when  there  was 
none  to  help.  He  was  wealthy,  intelligent,  hard- 
headed,  hard-tongued,  and  on  the  side  of  right  in 
a  sledge-hammer  fashion.  England  adored  him. 
What  were  Vade's  years  of  quiet  philanthropy  to 
this?  Nothing.  This  great,  vulgar,  pushing,  self- 
ish man,  with  his  vast  pose  of  philanthropy,  had 
been  the  idol  of  his  land,  and  the  most  potent 
influence  in  London,  which  is  a  yet  higher  thing. 
And  he  could  direct  and  wield  that  influence  rush- 
ing his  way  across  the  Continent  as  if  he  were  at 
home  in  Fleet  Street.  This  is  glory  as  we  count 
it  now.  This  is  to  be  a  prince. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

ONE  foggy  evening,  when  a  wet  raw  wind  blew 
in  small  gusts  at  intervals  along  the  pave- 
ments, themselves  covered  by  a  thin  layer  of  drab 
grease  hardly  to  be  dignified  by  the  name  of  mud, 
Mrs.  Hading  was  wending  her  way  across  the  road 
in  a  desolate  neighbourhood  to  her  destination, 
the  tram  starting-place. 

She  had  had  a  harder  day  than  usual,  and  was 
tired.  Her  beautiful,  pale  face  looked  wan  in 
the  glare  of  the  lamps  she  passed  at  intervals, 
and  in  spite  of  herself  she  was  vaguely  depressed. 
Work,  regarded  as  a  thing  to  fill  one's  life  en- 
tirely, fails  occasionally :  it  fails  when  one  is  phys- 
ically tired.  She  had  not  heard  from  her  husband 
for  weeks,  and  she  was  suffering  now  from  one  of 
those  attacks  of  self-questioning  which  she  had 
become  a  prey  to  of  late.  The  thought  had  come 
to  her  once  or  twice — was  she  too  solemn?  Had 
her  interest  in  the  poor  been  so  great  that  she  had 

overlooked   her  duty  of  being  interested  in  her 

361 


362  Saints  in  Society 

husband's  pastimes?  Yet  it  was  he  who  first 
taught  her  her  present  enthusiasm.  He  had 
changed  and  she  had  not  followed  him.  To-night 
she  blamed  herself. 

At  this  juncture  she  was  encountered  by  a 
woman  who  motioned  to  speak  to  her.  Clo  had 
sent  her  carriage  home  two  hours  before,  as  it  had 
been  a  long  day  and  promised  to  be  longer.  The 
want  and  misery  were  very  great,  and  being  only 
a  rather  slow,  painstaking  woman,  without  the 
genius  of  the  reforming  organiser,  she  had  stuck 
to  her  post  with  her  faithful  women  workers  until 
long  after  the  ordinary  time  to  go  back  to  the 
lonely  place  she  called  home.  Now,  on  this  dreary, 
muddy  winter's  evening,  she  wrapped  her  cloak 
closely  round  her  and  made  for  the  tram  terminus 
as  naturally  as  she  would  have  done  in  the  old  days 
when  carriages  and  motors  had  not  even  entered 
her  dreams.  She  was  painfully  irreclaimable  in 
such  ways  as  these.  She  could  never  rise  with  her 
husband.  They  had  been  right,  those  bygone 
prophetic  croakers;  she  would  be  a  drag  on  his 
career.  To-night  she  thought  she  was. 

By  a  common  jeweller's  window,  wherein  pinch- 
beck rings,  "  alberts,"  chains,  and  watches  were 
advertised  loudly,  not  only  by  cards  with  red 


Saints  in  Society  363 

lettering,  but  by  the  shouts  of  a  small  and  greasy 
gentleman  of  the  Jewish  persuasion  wearing  a 
large  nosegay  of  artificial  pink  flowers  in  the  but- 
tonhole of  his  sagging  grey  tail-coat,  stood  a  lady, 
apparently  studying  the  glories  within.  She  was 
a  medium-sized,  square  woman,  with  her  elbows 
fixed  against  her  hips  and  her  hands  joining  ex- 
actly in  the  middle  of  the  front  of  her  waist,  and 
holding  a  reticule.  She  wore  a  spotted  veil  tightly 
pulled  over  her  face,  and  a  small  toque.  In  that 
flaring  inferno  of  vulgarity  she  looked  very  lady- 
like. Ladylike  —  the  awful  phrase  occurred 
even  to  Clo  as  her  abstracted  glance  caught  the 
stranger's.  Who  was  she?  The  whole  thing  was 
vaguely  familiar. 

"Mrs  Hading,"  said  the  stranger,  approach- 
ing, "  may  I  speak  with  you  for  a  moment? " 
She  coughed.  "  My  name  is  Mrs.  Stilling- 
fleet." 

"  Of  course, "  said  Clo,  "  I  recollect  you,  Mrs. 
Stillingfleet.  I  have  met  your  husband  once  or 
twice.  Can  I  do  anything?" 

"  It  was  only  a  word  I  wanted,"  said  Mrs.  Still- 
ingfleet ;  "  I  did  not  like  to  call.  I  have  my 
reasons  for  not  attracting  any  attention  to  my 
movements,  for  the  sake  of  others — for  your  own 


364  Saints  in  Society 

sake  as  well  as  another's."  Her  manner  was  in- 
finitely mysterious.  Clo  grew  a  little  chillier. 

"  What  is  it?  she  said,"  in  something  of  her  old 
quick  tone. 

"It  is  about  Mr.  Hading,"  answered  the  other 
in  a  half  whisper,  most  irritating  to  the  nerves. 
"  You  are  now  a  great  lady,  Mrs.  Hading.  You 
move  in  the  highest  circles  of  the  creme-de-la-cr<?me 
You  know  all  the  best  people.  Your  friends  are 
carriage  people,  and  so  on.  You  created  a  sen- 
sation at  the  Dra wing-Room.  You  are  a  beauti- 
ful woman,  a  talented  one,  and  are  the  talk  of 
everybody.  You •" 

"  I  beg  you  not  to  talk  nonsense,"  said  Clo, 
goaded  into  wrath  by  the  string  of  hideously 
ill-expressed  snobberies.  "  What  is  it  all 
about? " 

The  howls  of  the  touting  Jew  by  the  pinchbeck 
shop  door,  redoubled  at  the  sight  of  Clo's  rich  fur- 
lined  cloak  and  air  of  distinction,  or  difference, 
from  her  surroundings,  now  surged  in  upon  their 
discourse. 

"Finest  diamonds  —  Ophir  ant  Golconda  — 
eighteen  caret  goldt  rings  for  three-an-six — three- 
an-six.  Laties  and  shentlemen, "  said  the  Israel- 
ite in  a  passion  of  reproach,  spreading  out  his  dirty 


Saints  in  Society  365 

hands  and  leering  at  the  crowd,  "what  more  can 
you  arsk?  Ve  gif  our  tings  away!  " 

The  ladylike  Mrs.  Stillingfleet  coughed  again 
with  pursed-up  lips. 

"  I  come  to  the  point,"  she  said;  "it  is  this — a 
warning  to  you  that  you  be  more  careful  as  to  your 
dealings  with  Sir  Samuel  Crawshay.  You  are 
being  watched." 

Clo's  face  went  white  with  anger. 

"  What  are  you  talking  about? "  she  said  half 
inaudibly.  "  I  do  not  understand  you." 

She  was  moving  away  in  a  fury  of  blind  in- 
dignation when  Mrs.  Stillingfleet  caught  her  arm. 

"  Mrs.  Hading,"  she  said,  "  I  beg  you  will  hear 
me.  My  intentions  are  of  the  best.  There  is  a 
woman  behind  all  this — a  woman  who  is  eagerly 
seeking  your  destruction.  She  is  my  own  enemy 
too.  I  warn  you  against  her.  Her  name  is  Lady 
Veronica  Vade."  She  said  the  name  in  a  whis- 
per. Melodramatic  as  were  her  utterances  and 
manner,  there  was  an  earnestness  in  her  voice  and 
a  look  of  frankness  in  her  eyes  that  compelled 
Clo,  in  spite  of  her  disgust,  to  listen.  The  woman 
hypnotised  her. 

"My  movements,"  said  she,  "cannot  interest 
the  lady  you  name.  She  has  never  been  my  friend. 


366  Saints  in  Society 

You  are  making  some  mistake,  Mrs.  Stillingfleet. ' ' 
She  made  as  if  to  walk  away,  but  the  woman 
persisted. 

"Mrs.  Hading,"  she  said  solemnly,  "I  ask  you 
to  think  of  the  past,  small  incidents  it  is  true,  but 
meaning  ones.  Do  you  recollect  ever  having 
seen  my  husband,  Mr.  Stillingfleet,  in  that  lady's 
society?" 

"  Yes,"  said  Clo,  "and  why  not?" 

"A-h-h, "  replied  the  other,  "  you  are  very  blind. 
So  you  saw  nothing  in  that?  How  innocent  you 
are — or  else  how  little  you  know  the  lady  I  speak 
of!" 

"  I  never  gave  it  a  thought, "  said  Clo,  coldly. 
"  I  beg  you  will  tell  me  your  business  and  conclude. 
I  am  anxious  to  get  home." 

"I  will,"  said  the  ladylike  person,  pinching 
her  lips.  "  I  mention  this  to  show  you  what 
grounds  I  have  for  making  my  statements.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  I  have  been  having  my  husband 
and  that  lady — and  that  lady,"  she  repeated, 
"watched.  I  am  weary  of  their  indifference  to 
me.  I  seek  for  revenge.  I  now  find,  through 
those  who  watch  for  me,  a  quite  unexpec- 
ted side  issue.  It  is  this — you  are  being 
watched." 


Saints  in  Society  367 

"What  do  you  mean?"  said  Clo,  despairing  at 
this  tangled  story. 

,     "  Have  you  never  heard  of  Slater's?"  said  the 
other,  ominously — "private  detectives?" 

"What  nonsense!"  said  Clo.  "Who  would  put 
detectives  on  to  me?" 

"Your  husband,"  answered  the  woman,  sol- 
emnly. 

"  My  husband  is  in  Italy, "  said  Clo. 

"So  is  that  lady, "  said  the  woman,  "  but  their 
agents  are  here." 

Clo  gazed  at  her. 

"  You  are  mad,  poor  woman, "  she  said. 

"  No,  I  am  sane  enough,  Mrs.  Hading.  You  are 
being  watched.  He  is  tired  of  you.  He  seeks  to 
be  rid  of  you — to  find  you  out  in  a  fault,  or  a 
seeming  fault.  That  will  do  as  well.  Therefore 
have  a  care.  He  and  that  lady  are  your  enemies 
— they  seek  your  destruction  between  them.  You 
are  blameless,  but  there  is  a  gentleman  with  whom 
you  are  too  frequently  seen.  Beware  of  their 
machinations. " 

Her  oracular  warnings  were  here  interrupted 
by  the  Hebraic  gentleman  with  the  buttonhole 
who  began  again  about  the  mines  of  Gol- 
conda  and  his  three-and-sixpenny  rings,  this 


368  Saints  in  Society 

time  at  the  top  of  his  voice,  a  very  cracked 
one. 

In  the  crowd  and  the  din  and  the  uncertain  light 
Clo  was  able  to  get  away  from  her  oracle  and  es- 
cape to  the  tram,  and  throw  herself  in  the  corner. 

Just  at  that  moment  the  vulgarity  of  the  whole 
thing  choked  her  as  something  too  hopelessly 
nauseating  to  be  taken  seriously.  The  back- 
kitchen  melodrama  of  the  whole  situation,  the 
woman's  darkling  looks  and  lurid  words,  her 
theatrical  fashion  of  expressing  herself,  her  low 
insinuations,  her  miserable  story,  combined  with 
the  surroundings  of  flaring  shops,  squalor,  and  the 
blandishments  of  the  pinchbeck  vender,  all  drew 
together  a  picture  of  sheer  vulgarity  which  in  itself 
made  the  whole  story  seem  not  only  impossible 
but  ludicrous. 

Then  she  remembered  Mark's  unusually  long 
silence  which  had  troubled  her  of  late,  and  all  the 
incidents  of  his  and  Vera's  acquaintanceship  which 
had  haunted  her  for  months  like  a  continually  re- 
curring and  troubling  dream.  Also  she  remem- 
bered, as  in  a  totally  new  aspect,  all  the  little 
friendly  attentions  she  had  let  Crawshay  pay  her, 
as  not  only  a  fellow- worker,  but  one  who  knew  her 
whole  past  and  had  followed  her  husband  and  her- 


Saints  in  Society  369 

self  through  all  the  stages  of  their  upward  career. 

At  this  stage  she  gave  herself  an  angry  shake. 
What  nonsense !  As  if  poor  kind  Crawshay,  more 
like  a  faithful,  friendly  dog  than  the  hero  of  an 
intrigue  could  possibly  be  twisted  into  a  cause 
against  her!  As  if  Mark  could  stoop  to  such  a 
cause!  Even  Vera,  whom  she  knew  disliked  her, 
would  hardly  trouble  herself  so  far  in  the  name 
of  flirtation.  That  uncanny  woman  had  a  mania, 
a  craze  for  imagining  plots — those  sort  of  people 
sometimes  had — and  she,  Clo,  had  been  silly 
enough  to  listen,  partly  because  she  was  tired 
and  overwrought  with  her  day's  work. 

She  thought  all  this  out  in  the  tram.  Alight- 
ing from  it  a  man  trod  on  her  dress  by  mistake, 
then,  as  she  turned  quickly,  gave  a  hurried  apology 
and  disappeared  into  the  shadows .  He  looked  like 
a  foreigner  and  wore  a  dark  blue  coat.  Some- 
thing about  his  appearance  seemed  vaguely  famil- 
iar. He  was  evidently  going  her  way,  for  as  she 
got  to  the  station  she  saw  him  still  in  her  wake. 
Feeling  worried  and  nervous  she  hailed  a  hansom 
outside  the  station  instead  of  taking  the  train, 
and  drove  quickly  home.  She  heard,  idly,  the 
wheels  of  another  hansom  following  hers  as  they 
reached  the  quieter  thoroughfares.  When  she 


37°  Saints  in  Society 

alighted  she  found  the  man  had  stopped  at  the 
wrong  house,  but  paid  him  and  walked  the  few 
steps  necessary  to  bring  her  to  her  own  door.  In 
doing  this  she  observed  the  occupant  of  the  other 
cab  alight  and  look  eagerly  in  her  direction.  As 
quickly,  too,  he  turned  away,  but  not  before  she 
noticed  his  face  and  coat  under  a  lamp.  It  was 
the  man  who  had  trod  on  her  dress  in  getting  out 
of  the  tram. 

She  shook  herself  again  impatiently.  She  was 
getting  absolutely  hysterical.  But  once  in  the 
house,  she  still  felt  a  little  uneasiness,  and  on  reach- 
ing her  room  half  an  hour  later  to  dress  for  dinner, 
she  pushed  the  blind  back  very  cautiously  and 
glanced  out.  The  same  man  was  standing  over 
the  way  in  the  shadow  of  a  building,  his  eyes  fixed 
upon  the  house.  Clearly  some  one,  for  some 
reason,  was  watching  her  and  hers.  What  could 
it  mean? 

That  night  sleep  forsook  her  completely.  Now 
in  prayer,  broken  and  vague,  now  pacing  the  room, 
she  waited  for  the  morning  in  a  fever,  a  trouble  and 
anxiety,  and  miserable  self -questioning. 

To  what  had  wealth  and  power  brought  them? 
Was  this  the  end  of  Mark's  greatness? 

Oh,  for  the  old  days  in  the  Wai  worth  back  street! 


Saints  in  Society  371 

Oh,  for  the  old  lost  Mark  who  never  could  be  again ! 
There  is  nothing  in  the  world  so  sad  as  to  meet  the 
ghosts  of  the  living.  There  is  no  shade  from  the 
tomb  equal  in  terror  to  this — the  wraith  of  an 
ego  that  is  dead,  dead,  in  the  casket  that  was 
once  its  temple. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

TN  the  first  shock  of  her  discovery,  Clo,  who 
*  had  borne  so  much  in  silence,  now  nearly 
lost  her  head  in  her  grief  and  indignation. 

To  whom  could  she  turn?  Her  first  blind  in- 
stinct was  to  tell  Crawshay — we  are  so  ridiculous 
in  the  childishness  of  sorrow.  Of  course  the  last 
person  in  the  world  to  whom  she  could  ever  speak 
of  such  a  thing.  Yet  Crawshay  had  so  long  now 
stood  for  protection,  for  strong,  silent  sympathy 
and  help  in  her  semi-consciousness,  that  instinct- 
ively she  thought  of  him  now  for  counsel.  Lady 
Listower? — out  of  the  question.  How  could  she 
speak  of  the  miserable  affair  to  Vera's  mother? 
Lord  Henry,  as  her  brother,  was  equally  out  of 
the  question.  Dorcas — the  dear  unworldly  soul! 
— all  she  would  say  was,  "Pray  and  do  right." 
She  knew  the  world — that  world — too  little  to  be 
of  practical  use  at  just  such  a  crisis.  Her  coun- 
sel would  be  wise  enough  in  its  own  true  way, 

but  there  conies  a  time  when  something  more 

372 


Saints  in  Society  373 

than  the  sweetest  and  truest  counsels  is  wanted ; 
a  time  in  our  disillusion  and  despair  when  we 
yearn  for  actual  human  sympathy  and  the  kindly 
contact  of  daily  association  with  one  who  under- 
stands. 

She  could  not  have  Dorcas  to  stay  with  her 
at  home,  she  had  been  forbidden  the  house  as  Clo 
well  remembered.  Even  now,  in  such  a  paltry 
matter,  she  was  true  to  her  husband's  wishes. 
To  Dorcas,  again,  she  could  not  go  herself;  she 
would  have  liked  to  have  put  up  at  the  Settle- 
ment for  a  week  or  two  in  that  dear  woman's 
loving  protection,  but  that  was  equally  impossi- 
ble. If  she  had  enemies  determined  to  make  evil 
of  her  actions,  how  would  her  desertion  of  her 
husband's  home,  to  the  place  above  all  others 
where  Crawshay  was  entitled  to  spend  his  days, 
look  in  their  evil  eyes? — a  place  which,  though 
home  to  her,  was  run  by  people  in  her  pay  and 
of  which  she  was  absolute  mistress?  Even  her 
inexperience  told  her  it  would  not  do.  Then  an 
idea  came  to  her. 

There  was  one  friend  left,  the  friend  who  had 
helped  her  before,  Lady  Highgate.  She  would 
tell  her  about  it  at  any  rate  and  ask  her  advice. 
But  first  she  made  sure  there  was  no  mistake 


374  Saints  in  Society 

about  the  watching.  She  went  through  another 
weary  day,  keeping  her  secret  to  herself  on  purpose 
to  test  the  reality  of  this.  The  Settlement  she 
avoided,  but  purposely  went  in  other  directions, 
taking  cabs,  trains,  and  various  vehicles,  and 
watching  to  see,  without  appearing  to  do  so, 
whether  she  was  followed  by  any  one.  There  was 
no  doubt  that  the  foreign-looking  man  in  the  blue 
coat  was  keeping  a  most  close  espionage  on  all  her 
goings  and  comings,  and  there  was  also  a  woman 
who  seemed  to  be  continually  cropping  up  on  her 
path.  Certainly  she  had  to  admit  it  was  no  fancy 
but  a  hideous  reality. 

It  began  to  get  on  her  nerves.  The  man, 
though  on  one  occasion  last  seen  in  Bond  Street, 
was  lounging  among  the  trees  at  the  far  side  of 
Regent's  Park  when  she  went  round  there  in  a 
hansom,  looking  thoughtfully  into  the  murky 
oiliness  of  the  black,  wicked-looking  canal.  He 
and  his  sinister  errand  seemed  part  and  parcel 
with  its  evil  depths,  as  Clo  grasped  the  picture  of 
them  under  the  grey  wintry  sky.  Her  whole 
horizon  seemed  to  have  suddenly  succumbed  to 
the  lordship  of  fiends  and  creatures  of  untold 
evil.  And  fresh  complications  harassed  her  at 
every  turn.  What  should  she  do  about  Craw- 


Saints  in  Society  375 

shay?  She  could  not  ask  him  to  leave  the  Set- 
tlement without  giving  the  real  or  else  some 
very  cleverly  invented  reason.  He  was  a  most 
difficult  person  to  move  if  he  thought  he  intended 
to  stay  anywhere — Hading  himself  had  found  that 
out.  Yet  she  dare  not,  now  her  eyes  were  opened, 
risk  the  danger  to  his  and  her  own  reputation 
in  permitting  him  to  perform  his  duties  there  as 
usual,  offering  her  his  respectful  kindnesses,  his 
occasional  escort,  his  thoughtful  ministrations, 
innocent  of  the  interpretation  their  enemies  would 
put,  had  already  put,  on  such  harmless  chival- 
rous things.  Tired  out,  hungry,  miserable  (she 
had  lunched  on  tea  and  a  bun  after  the  fashion 
of  femininity  left  to  itself),  and  beginning,  at 
the  close  of  the  most  frightful  day  she  had  ever 
spent,  to  be  terrified  out  of  her  wits,  she  drove 
at  last  to  Lady  Highgate's.  Regent's  Park  in  a 
winter  mist,  and  that  enclosed  canal,  were  beyond 
her  enduring  in  her  present  state  of  hunted 
despair. 

It  was  about  six  o'clock  when  she  reached 
Grosvenor  Square,  a  miserable,  damp,  murky 
evening  through  which  the  lights  flickered  yellow 
and  faint.  Her  ladyship  was  out,  said  the  man 
when  she  knocked  at  the  door.  She  said  she 


376  Saints  in  Society 

would  wait.  So  she  sat  alone  in  the  semi-dark- 
ened room,  brooding  by  the  fire  over  all  the  blank- 
ness  of  the  future  as  we  do  brood  when  we  are 
very  faint  and  tired.  There  rose  before  her  an 
inevitable  vision  of  her  lost  Mark — Mark  who  was 
dead — dead — though  his  body  still  lived.  Mark 
who  had  fallen  so  low  and  so  hopelessly.  She 
blamed  herself  bitterly.  Perhaps  it  was  owing 
to  her  coldness  and  quietness — they  were  not  his 
style,  she  said.  He  didn't  like  such  quiet  women. 
She  took  off  her  hat,  wet  with  the  fog  of  Regent's 
Park,  to  relieve  the  burning  of  her  weary  head. 
Mark  had  made  a  mistake  in  marrying  her,  she 
said.  The  tears  welled  to  her  eyes  and  glistened 
in  the  firelight  as  they  fell.  She  had  done  her 
best,  but  somehow  they  had  not  pulled  together ; 
she  had  begun  to  realise  that  long  ago,  but  now 
it  haunted  her  like  a  nightmare.  She  had  not 
risen  with  him.  She  could  never  belong  to  his 
world.  It  is  possibly  forfeiting  all  feminine  sym- 
pathy on  her  behalf  to  say  that  at  this  juncture 
she  did  not  rave  or  talk  incoherently  about  the 
utter  misery  of  being  a  woman.  She  hardly  gave 
Vera  a  thought  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  out- 
raged wife.  She  did  not  clutch  and  unclutch  her 
ringed  white  hands  at  all,  or  say  scathing  things 


Saints  in  Society  377 

in  epigrammatic  form.  She  sat  rather  huddled 
up  in  the  big  chair  with  the  maroon  fur-lined 
cloak  wrapped  round  her  and  her  fair  hair  disor- 
dered, gazing  sadly  and  tearfully  into  the  fire. 
The  persecuted  woman  is  the  fashion,  but  not  she 
who  is  persecuted  and  meek.  A  capacity  to  rant, 
and  lovely  Parisian  costumes  to  rant  in,  make  all 
the  difference.  This  lady  with  the  queenly  face 
and  the  slum  origin  would  never  be  fashionable: 
she  was  simply  and  naively  miserable  for  the 
simple  and  naive  reason  that  in  trying  to  do  her 
duty  as  she  saw  it  she  had  lost  her  husband's 
love.  It  never  occurred  to  her  to  turn  the  sit- 
uation into  heroics,  though  there  were  all  the 
materials  for  a  melodrama  to  hand — detectives, 
cruel  husband,  wicked  adventuress,  whispering  in- 
formers, etc.,  etc.  She  only  wept  silently  like  a 
lonely  child  because  she  had  lost  the  love  of  him 
she  served. 

Old  Lady  Highgate,  entering  the  room  from  her 
drive  at  this  juncture,  came  blinking  and  fumbling 
forward  in  the  flickering  light,  saying,  "  Where 
are  you,  my  child?  Where  are  you?  " 

Finding  the  sobbing  figure  on  the  chair,  she 
just  came  and  sat  by  it,  patting  the  bowed  head 
and  murmuring  those  wordless  things  that  come 


378  Saints  in  Society 

cooing  so  naturally  from  the  lips  of  every  woman 
with  a  mother  heart.  And,  by-the-bye,  these  are 
not  always  necessarily  the  mothers.  This  one 
was  a  childless  widow,  old  enough  to  be  a  great- 
grandmother,  but  not  lucky  enough,  and  wearing 
a  voluminous  crepe-covered  bonnet  in  memory  of 
a  man  who  had  rested  under  a  marble  sarcophagus 
for  thirty  years  and  who  had  never  loved  her. 
That  lined  old  hand  with  the  large  veins  on  it,  and 
the  big  black  enamel  mourning  ring  standing  out 
amongst  the  crusted  diamonds  flashing  in  the 
firelight,  had  offered  comfort  to  many  a  mourner, 
whether  of  the  living  or  the  dead.  She  herself  had 
had  so  long  to  mourn  the  living  in  silence,  that 
when  he  died  it  was  a  kindly  relief  to  wear  the 
sombre  insignia  of  a  mourning  which  is  at  least 
respectable  and  capable  of  being  shown  to  the 
world. 

When  Clo's  sobs  subsided  a  little  and  she  told 
her  broken  story,  the  ancient  lady  listened  and 
nodded,  holding  her  hands  the  while,  but  saying 
very  little.  When  the  brief  tale  was  told,  she 
said, — 

"You  must  come  to  me.  You  shall  not  go 
back  to-night.  Parkins  shall  fetch  your  maid  and 
your  things.  I  will  not  hear  of  a  refusal." 


Saints  in  Society  379 

Also  she  would  not  hear  of  another  word  on  the 
subject  that  night,  and  totally  refused  to  discuss 
what  could  or  could  not  be  done  about  Crawshay 
or  anybody  else. 

"  Let  the  man  take  care  of  himself,  "  she  said 
in  her  peremptory  manner,  "  you  are  to  have  a 
quiet  dinner  and  go  to  bed  early.  There  is  plenty 
of  time  to  consider  the  reputation  and  future  of 
this  officious  person — I  shall  call  him  what  I  like, ' ' 
she  added  sharply,  as  Clo  seemed  about  to  de- 
precate this  sweeping  condemnation.  "  I  knew 
him  when  he  squeaked  with  whooping-cough,  and 
dandled  him  when  he  wore  a  red  tartan  frock  and 
prune-coloured  kid  boots,  and  little  frills.  He  is  a 
most  obstinate  person.  For  the  present  I  refuse 
to  discuss  him.  To-morrow  will  do  for  that,  when 
you,  my  poor  child,  have  had  a  night's  rest. ' ' 

So  in  the  calm  of  that  stern  but  motherly  pro- 
tection the  weary  woman  gave  up  her  cares  for 
a  while,  and  had  a  good  night's  rest,  feeling  at  last 
the  comfort  of  a  haven  for  her  weary  little  head. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE  day  following  was  bright  and  sunny,  and 
Clo  woke  with  a  vague  sense  of  relief  and  re- 
newed life,  unaccountable  save  for  two  things 
— the  sun  sent  long  shafts  of  warm  light  across 
her  bedroom  floor,  and  she  had  a  warm  feeling 
of  being  loved  and  protected. 

After  all  she  was  young,  and  had  found  life 
very  serious  since  success  had  come  to  her  and 
hers.  Wealth  and  power  had  taught  her  a 
sense  of  responsibility;  what  would  have  turned 
some  women's  heads  had  awakened  in  her  a 
latent  and  undiscovered  instinct  of  duty,  and 
circumstances,  amongst  these  her  long-growing 
if  vague  conviction  of  her  husband's  deflection 
from  the  path  he  had  once  set  himself,  had 
combined  to  keep  that  instinct  of  duty  so  upper- 
most in  her  mind  as  to  leave  her  little  time 
for  natural  fun — the  joy  that  should  be  a  part 
of  all  youth,  and  without  which  youth  insists 

on  taking  its  revenge  in  its  own  tragic  way. 

380 


Saints  in  Society  381 

But  just  as  after  a  long-drawn  shock  of  sorrow 
we  wake  up  one  fine  morning  with  a  bewildering 
consciousness  that  we  have  borne  enough  and 
for  the  moment  can  bear  no  more,  so  to-day 
she  rose  up  with  a  lightness  of  feeling  quite 
unaccountable  save  for  the  two  facts  of  sun- 
shine and  friendship  having  suddenly  flooded 
into  her  consciousness.  After  all,  two  very 
blessed  things,  and  equally  from  the  hand  of 
God. 

She  was  tired  with  long  thinking  and  worry- 
ing, and  she  did  not  ask  herself  whose  friend- 
ship gave  the  final  tinge  of  gold  to  her  reflec- 
tions, since  it  was  obviously  Lady  Highgate's. 
And  as  temptation  does  not  approach  the 
human  heart  labelled  with  large  letters — in 
black  on  white  with  red  capitals — it  did  not 
occur  to  connect  the  special  ruddy  glint  of 
the  sunbeams  without  her  window-boxes  with 
the  fact  that  her  enemies  had  suggested  to 
her  another  love — a  love  she  must  not  think 
about. 

Of  old  the  Evil  One  has  exhibited  many 
devices,  but  perhaps  none  so  wary  as  that  he 
brings  into  play  when  he  suggests  to  a  woman 
that  there  is  a  sweet  and  interesting  thing  close 


382  Saints  in  Society 

at  hand  that  she  may  not  think  about.  He 
tells  her  so  solemnly  that  she  may  not  think 
about  it.  It  is  his  oldest  trick — he  played  it 
first  with  Eve.  He  played  it  now,  that  spring 
morning,  in  Grosvenor  Square.  Clo,  long  starved 
and  wearied  out  for  love,  went  no  further  in 
her  innermost  speculation  than  the  vague  ques- 
tion— Were  her  enemies  partly  right?  Was  there 
indeed  a  love — wrong,  of  course,  and  out  of 
all  order  and  not  to  be  thought  of — laid  even 
now  at  her  very  threshold  ?  But  the  very  possibility 
of  the  question  made  of  this  fair  morning  some- 
thing indefinably,  fantastically  fairer.  In  such  neb- 
ulous fashion  do  dreams  that  may  never  be  con- 
ceive a  semi-conscious  life  in  the  heart ;  and  after- 
wards when  it  is  all  over,  and  we  are  grown  logical 
and  reminiscent,  we  call  the  thing  temptation. 

Clo,  with  her  fair  hair  more  carefully  dressed 
than  usual,  looked  younger  and  more  girlish 
than  of  late  as  she  greeted  her  kind  protector 
that  morning.  The  weeping  wife  of  the  night 
before  was  gone,  and  a  girl  like  a  strip  of  the  spring 
sunshine  flitted  down  to  Lady  Highgate's  pres- 
ence with  a  lightness  which  made  that  lady  open 
her  shrewd  eyes  a  little  wider  and  look  twice 
at  the  visitor. 


Saints  in  Society  383 

She  insisted  on  taking  her  for  a  drive  during 
the  forenoon,  and  purposely  went  to  all  the 
well-known  rendezvous  of  "people  one  knows." 

"  You  see,  "  she  said,  "  your  being  seen  with  me 
places  your  enemies  at  such  a  disadvantage.  Your 
really  childish  husband  would  look  intolerably 
small  if  he  were  to  meet  us  now.  The  world 
is  full  of  most  annoying  men — annoying  be- 
cause they  are  so  babyish  in  their  enmities. 
They  might  do  things  more  cleverly — less  obvi- 
ously. Men  are  so  horribly  obvious.  Of  course, 
that  quality  makes  them  rule  the  world;  but 
it  is,  nevertheless,  very  tiresome." 

During  the  course  of  this  drive  they  twice 
encountered  the  foreign-looking  man  whose  es- 
pionage was  becoming  a  shadow  on  Clo's  path. 

That  afternoon  Crawshay  called.  He  asked 
for  Mrs.  Hading,  the  servant  said.  Clo  and  Lady 
Highgate  were  seated  in  a  small  drawing-room 
or  ante-room,  surrounded  by  cages  of  parrots, 
and  busy  over  small  needlework  and  correspond- 
ence. Half -asphyxia  ted  dogs,  almost  unrecog- 
nisable as  to  species,  wearing  large  coloured 
bows  on  their  necks,  and  most  of  them  blind  in 
one  eye,  swarmed  about  the  thick  carpet  and 
mixed  themselves  up  with  the  sprawling  designs 


384  Saints  in  Society 

of  immense  cabbage  roses  portrayed  thereon 
in  wreaths.  The  chdtelaine  of  this  woolly  Zoo- 
logical Gardens  sat  erect  and  eagle-nosed  as 
usual,  appearing  to  rise  out  of  the  midst  of  her 
domestic  gathering  ,  like  the  haughty  Phosnix 
rising  out  of  tongues  of  woolly  flame  on  an 
insurance  advertisement.  Clo,  looking  a  little 
paler  than  in  the  gay  hours  of  the  morning, 
was  writing  a  few  notes  for  her  hostess  in  her 
large  clear  hand,  in  obedience  to  that  stern 
lady's  mandate  that  she  must  have  something 
else  to  think  about  besides  her  own  troubles. 

"Take  Sir  Samuel  into  the  library,"  said  Lady 
Highgate. 

"Must  I  see  him?"  Clo  asked,  when  the  man 
had  gone,  startled  at  the  thought  of  having  to 
face  her  perplexities  so  soon  again. 

Lady  Highgate  looked  up  from  her  fancy  work 
—beading  a  wool  mat. 

"  Do  you  wish  to  ?"  she  said,  glancing  sharply 
out  of  her  stern,  black  eyes. 

"  No — indeed,"  said  Clo,  earnestly,  "  I  cannot, 
cannot 

"Then  I  think  you  had  better. " 

"But  why?" 

"To  bid  him  go — out  of  your  life.  " 


Saints  in  Society  385 

"I  cannot  see  that  my  not  wanting  to  see  him 
can  possibly— 

"  I  can.  If  you  had  said,  '  Oh!  I '11  see  him, '  in 
your  own  calm,  business-like  way,  my  dear,  I 
should  have  said,  'No,  I  wouldn't — better  not. 
Don't  give  them  a  chance  to  talk.'  But  as  you 
look  at  me  with  wide,  startled  eyes,  and  saying, 
in  a  broken  voice,  that  you  '  cannot,  cannot,'  I 
say  you  must — and  say  good-bye.  If  you  have 
got  to  the  'cannot,  cannot '  stage,  there  is  nothing 
else  to  be  done." 

Clo  looked  at  her  with  wide  eyes,  and  as  she 
looked  the  warm  blood  rose  to  her  cheeks  and 
brow,  suffusing  her  white  neck  and  bathing  her 
pale  stillness  in  one  rosy  glow.  Slowly  her  head 
drooped  forward  and  she  put  up  her  hand  to  her 
brow,  and  for  a  minute  hid  her  eyes. 

' '  Never, ' '  she  said,  half  to  herself.  And,  "  You 
do  not  understand,"  to  Lady  Highgate. 

"  Don't  I?"  said  that  matron,  beading  a  violet 
flower  on  her  canvas  and  shutting  her  thin  lips 
tightly. 

"  Sir  Samuel  is  so  kind, ' '  said  Clo,  "  he  has  been 
like  a  brother  to  me.  I  have  always  looked  to 
him  for  guidance — lately,  I  mean.  He  is  so  good 
and  so  clever.  It  seems  hard  now  to  appear  to 


386  Saints  in  Society 

spurn  his  services,  and  to  give  no  reason.  I  hate 
ingratitude. ' ' 

"So  do  I, ' '  said  her  ladyship,  drily,  "but  I  think 
gratitude  is  more  dangerous.  I  think  if  I  were 
you  I  would  put  it  that  I  was  going  to  manage  the 
money  affairs  myself  in  future.  Say  your  horri- 
ble husband  wishes  it,  if  you  like.  Anything  to 
get  out  of  having  Sir  Samuel  always  in  attend- 
ance. If  he  is  not  the  most  unutterably  stupid 
person  in  the  world  he  will  take  the  hint  and  go. 
But  I  cannot  answer  for  him — he  was  obstinate 
in  red  tartan.  He  is  probably  quite  as  tire- 
some now  one  can  no  longer  give  him  a  good  sound 
whipping. ' ' 

She  added,  "  Go,  my  dear,"  as  Clo  remained  per- 
plexed. And  she  went. 

In  the  library,  a  large  gloomy  room  like  a  mort- 
uary, furnished  in  the  Vanbrugh  style,  with  heavy 
copper  chandeliers  and  deep  crimson  hangings — 
gone  maroon  with  age — and  what  appeared  to  be 
coal-black  pictures,  Crawshay  awaited  her,  stand- 
ing with  his  back  to  the  heavily  carved  black 
marble  mantelpiece  with  its  grim  armorial  bear- 
ings. Crawshay  had  a  baronial  habit  of  always 
sticking  himself  with  his  back  to  a  fireplace, 
whether  it  was  empty  or  otherwise.  It  is  a  relic 


Saints  in  Society  387 

of  an  ancient  notion  that  a  man's  hearth  is  his 
castle,  and  in  Crawshay  was  probably  such  an  in- 
born instinct  that  he  felt  "castley"  on  other 
people's  hearths. 

She  came  into  the  room  noiselessly  and  a  little 
timidly,  pale  with  the  thought  of  her  ungracious 
duty,  and  troubled  with  all  his  presence  called  up, 
with  the  tender  trouble  of  all  these  reflections  in 
her  eyes .  Perhaps  she  had  never  looked  so  beauti- 
ful to  him  as  at  that  moment. 

He  stepped  forward  eagerly  to  meet  her,  and 
took  both  her  hands  in  his  and  held  them  for  a 
moment,  then  let  them  drop  suddenly.  How 
could  she  begin  to  tell  him  all  his  kindness  was  at 
an  end?  She  prepared  to  speak  out.  But  what 
was  there  about  his  manner  that  struck  her  as 
something  new  and  arrested  her  attention?  He 
was  usually  somewhat  stolid,  and  had  a  habit  of 
looking  out  on  the  world  with  his  rather  heavy 
brows  lowered — good-naturedly  enough,  but  with 
a  very  heavy  and  self-contained  effect :  just  the 
very  manner  that  had  inspired  her  with  such  con- 
fidence in  him.  But  now  there  was  a  suppressed 
exaltation  in  his  air,  a  quickness  in  his  move- 
ments, a  fire  in  his  blue-grey  eyes.  His  warm 
red  curly  hair,  his  browny-red  face,  his  vigorous, 


388  Saints  in  Society 

thick-set  frame,  were  alert  with  a  new,  eager  life ; 
he  seemed  too  vigorous  and  sunny  to  appear  in 
place  in  this  great  solemn  room  dim  with  the 
dead  records  of  the  past.  He  looked  at  her  with 
intent,  smiling  eyes,  even  a  little  abstracted, 
and  altogether  ecstatic.  What  was  it? 

"You  have  good  news?"  she  said. 

"News?  Yes,"  he  answered  shortly,  smiling 
down  upon  her;  "I  am  going  away.  I  came  to 
say  good-bye." 

"Going  away?"  she  said,  not  comprehending 
him. 

"  Yes.  For  two  years — or  more.  I  'm  going  to 
the  Rockies — shooting,"  he  answered. 

Suddenly  she  felt  her  world  spinning  round 
her,  and  stopped  a  moment  to  think.  He  was 
going  away  of  his  own  accord — the  solution  of  the 
difficulty.  She  need  not  wound  his  kindness  after 
all.  It  was  all  a  wonderful  coincidence.  How 
glad  she  ought  to  feel.  She  really  must  feel 
glad — dear  me,  this  should  be  a  great  relief. 
Somehow,  though,  it  was  n't.  But  she  must  speak. 
He  was  standing  smiling  down  upon  her  expect- 
antly. 

"  How  sudden,"  she  said;  "  is  n't  it?" 

"  Oh,  no;  not  at  all,"  he  answered  jubilantly; 


Saints  in  Society  389 

"as  a  matter  of  fact,  you  know,  I  Ve  thought  of 
it  a  long  time.  Jolly  sport  and  all  that.  I  'm 
getting  hipped  for  want  of  exercise.  Besides, 
this  beastly  Government 's  going  out  shortly,  and 
these  cads  of  cousins  of  mine  will  get  into  office 
again — you  see  if  they  don't.  I  must  shoot  some- 
thing—murder something  you  know,  before  I  can 
put  up  with  that.  That 's  why  I  'm  going. 
Thought  I  'd  run  in  and  tell  you — heard  you 
were  here.  The  Settlement  affairs  are  in  good 
order.  I  Ve  seen  Vannerheim,  who  says  he  can 
easily  get  another  treasurer — pay  some  Johnny 
or  other  to  do  it.  No  more  '  hons. '  he  says.  A  bit 
sick  of  me.  I  did  give  it  to  'em  sometimes, 
didn't  I?  Thought  I  ought  to  come  and  tell 
you  all  about  it." 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Clo,  trying  not  to  look  blank; 
"of  course.  It  had  been  so  kind  of  you,  Sir  Sam-, 
uel ;  we  can  never  thank  you  for  all — all  you  have 
done." 

She  looked  at  him  frankly,  but  dropped  her  eyes 
from  the  too  genial  glow  in  his. 

"  You're  staying  with  Lady  Highgate? ' '  he  said. 

"Yes;  for  a  time." 

"  I  should  stay  on  as  long  as  she  'd  have  me,  if 
I  were  you, ' '  he  said,  a  little  earnestly  for  him. 


39°  Saints  in  Society 

"It 's  dull  for  you  at  Queen's  Gate,  and  she  's  a 
grand  woman.  The  best  friend  and  the  best 
enemy  I  know.  I  shouldn't  go  back  there  all 
alone  again.  Shall  you?" 

"I  must  see,"  she  answered  smilingly,  and 
trying  so  very  hard  to  be  glad  he  was  really  going 
without  any  explanations. 

"  Well,  good-bye, ' '  he  said,  his  face  still  flushed 
and  boyish-looking,  and  holding  her  hand  a 
moment. 

"  Good-bye — and  thank  you, ' '  she  said. 

She  accompanied  him  to  the  door  of  the  room. 
Beyond  it  lay  a  small  ante-room,  full  of  an  over- 
flow of  books  and  quaint  art  treasures;  a  light 
little  room,  gay  with  early  spring  flowers  in  copper 
bowls,  and  full  of  their  fragrance.  Crawshay 
went  on  chattering  hard  as  they  walked  slowly 
into  this  apartment  on  their  way  to  the  hall;  he 
was  rattling  off  vague  things,  various  reasons  for 
his  departure  and  messages  to  friends.  It  was 
not  like  him  to  talk  so  much — he  was  usually  so 
silent.  He  spoke  of  the  Listowers  and  gave  her 
a  few  messages  for  them. 

"I  tried  to  catch  Vade,"  he  said,  "but  I 
couldn't  find  him.  I  saw  that  chap  of  his  — 
Stillingfleet.  But  I  wish  you'd  tell  Vade  I 


Saints  in  Society  391 

hunted  him  all  over  the  place  in  vain  to  say  good- 
bye. Queer  fellow,  Stillingfleet.  By-the-bye,  I 
wonder  if  you  have  ever  by  any  chance  come 
across  his  wife,  Mrs.  Stillingfleet?  But  I  don't 
suppose  you  have." 

A  sudden  fear  crossed  Clo's  mind.  She  looked 
quickly  at  him. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  going  a  little  paler;  "  I  know 
her.  Why?" 

He  turned  to  a  side  table  where  a  beautiful  old 
bronze  stood  in  a  profusion  of  other  exquisite 
antiques.  He  bent  to  examine  it  more  closely,  so 
that  his  face  was  turned  sideways  to  Clo,  who 
stood  a  little  away  by  the  bookcase. 

"  Oh,  nothing, ' '  he  said  lightly ;  "  rather  a  weird 
person.  Could  n't  make  out  whether  she  was  sane 
or  not.  If  she  comes  fussing  here  I  should  advise 
you  not  to  see  her. ' '  He  was  still  examining  the 
bronze  and  stooping  close  over  the  table.  His 
always  ruddy  face  was  very  flushed. 

"  Have  you  seen  her — do  you  know  her,  then? ' ' 
said  Clo,  in  a  low  voice. 

"  Oh!  saw  her  on  a  small  matter  of  business,  for 
a  few  minutes.  Thought  she  was  dotty.  Probably 
she  is." 

"Where  did  you  see  her?" 


392  Saints  in  Society 

"  She  came  round  to  Norfolk  Square  and  called 
on  me  two  days  ago.  Rather  a  maniac.  If  she 
starts  calling  on  you,  Mrs.  Hading,  you  take  my 
advice  and  give  orders  for  her  not  to  be  admitted. 
Those  wandering  lunatics  only  badger  one;  and 
she  '11  bother  you  for  nothing .  Don '  t  you  see  her . ' ' 

He  still  bent  and  looked  at  the  bronze,  half 
turned  away  from  Clo.  The  afternoon  light 
shone  in  from  the  window  above  him,  and  made 
his  ruddy  curls  gleam  like  red  gold.  His  great 
strong  face  looked  absolutely  shy.  The  woman 
with  her  story  had  been  to  him!  He  knew  all. 
And  he  was  going  away  for  her  sake ;  all  alone  away 
from  all  his  friends.  He  had  seen  that  woman, 
he  knew  the  whole  sordid,  miserable  plot;  and  he 
was  doing  all  this  for  her,  and  fondly  imagining 
she  did  not  know  the  reason  of  his  sacrifice.  She 
suddenly  thought  of  who  and  what  they  two  were 
— a  man  of  social  power,  good  birth,  title,  wealth, 
and  ability,  with  all  the  world  before  him;  and  a 
slum  girl,  married  to  a  man  who  deliberately  de- 
graded her.  Her  heart  welled  up  with  gratitude 
to  this  great  boyish,  knightly  gentleman.  In  the 
rush  of  her  greatful  feeling  she  never  remembered 
propriety  at  all;  she  simply  knew  that  she  could 
not  let  him  go  without  allowing  him  to  see  at 


Saints  in  Society  393 

least  that  she  understood  his  goodness,  his 
chivalry. 

"Sir  Samuel,"  she  said,  using  his  title  now 
in  a  sudden  overweening  sense  of  admiration  and 
respect,  "I  have  seen  her  too.  I  have  heard  her 
story." 

He  drew  himself  up  sharply  and  looked  at  her 
intently. 

"You  have?     By  Jove!"  was  all  he  said. 

Clo  added,  "  She  is  not  mad.  What  she  says 
is  true.  I  am  followed  by  some  one — watched. 
I  was  followed  this  morning. ' '  She  could  hardly 
speak  above  a  whisper  for  shame. 

"  I  know  it  is  true, ' '  he  said ;  "  I  made  sure  of 
that  before  I  decided  to  make  myself  scarce.  I 
did  n't  believe  the  woman — but  I  believe  other 
facts  that  I  have  since  got  hold  of.  But  never  you 
mind.  You  are  in  safe  enough  hands  with  Lady 
Highgate — and  with  me  out  of  the  way.  It  will 
all  come  right  in  the  end — depend  upon  it." 

"Oh!  it  is  horrible,  horrible,"  she  said,  putting 
up  her  hands  to  her  face  in  an  access  of  miserable 
confusion.  "How  can  I  thank  you?  Oh!  do 
forgive  me — and  my  enemies,"  she  added.  She 
could  not  bring  herself  to  say  "my  husband." 

His  eyes  lighted  up  as  they  had  done  at  her 


394  Saints  in  Society 

entrance.  He  crossed  quickly  to  where  she  stood 
by  the  bookcase,  a  picture  of  shame  and  distress. 
There  were  tears  in  the  eyes  she  could  not  raise  to 
his.  He  made  as  if  to  take  her  hands,  then  evi- 
dently thought  better  of  it,  and  stood  in  front  of 
her  like  a  private  at  attention  with  his  hands  hang- 
ing at  either  side  of  him,  that  warm  glowing 
glance  of  restrained  ecstasy  in  his  grey  eyes. 

"  There  's  nothing  to  forgive,"  he  said,  smiling 
down  upon  her,  and  speaking  in  a  quick,  low  tone . 
'  Do  you  know,  I  am  more  honoured  than  I  can 
say.  It 's  ripping — I  say  it 's  ripping,  to  be  allowed 
to  do  something  for  you:  to  suffer  for  and  with 
you.  I  'd  go  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  to  be — to  be 
mixed  up  with  you  in  any  way.  I  'd  rather  be  ban- 
ished by  you  than  crowned  a  king  by  any  other 
woman  in  the  world.  I  can't  put  it  cleverly,  but 
I  mean  it.  This  is  better  than  working  for  you 
at  the  Settlement.  It  's  a  jolly  sight  better  than 
being  your  secretary — I  'd  rather —  I  'd  rather 
— why,  I  'd  rather  I  was  your  worst  enemy  than 
your  secretary — by  Jove,  I  would !  I  'm  proud  to 
go  away  because — your  dear  name  is  at  stake  " 
he  said  it  very  reverently;  "  I  'm  honoured  if  I 
bear  my  share  of  the  burden.  Good-bye." 

He  put  out  his  hand  and  grasped  hers.     Her 


Saints  in  Society  395 

tears  would  fall  a  little,  though  she  tried  to  keep 
them  back. 

"  Oh,  my  friend,"  she  said,  "  how  can  I  thank 
you?  " 

He  lifted  up  her  hand  and  put  it  to  his  lips  and 
kissed  it. 

"God  bless  you,"  he  said;  and  added,  "Say 
something  like  that  for  me  at  nights"— and  was 
gone. 


CHAPTER    XXVI 

SIR  MARK  HADING  sat  alone  in  the  dining- 
room  of  his  great  country  house,  a  place  he  had 
built  himself  at  a  fabulous  cost.  From  the  carved 
cedar-wood  ceiling  to  the  gaudy  gold  and  grey 
and  crimson  walls  with  huge  white  marble  pillars 
were  overwhelming  evidences  of  sheer  wealth 
heaped  together  in  positively  tasteless  confusion. 
There  was  no  rest  in  the  place,  no  peace:  it  said, 
"Money,  money,"  unceasingly,  with  a  hard 
gramophone  persistency:  it  glittered  money,  it 
blazoned  money.  It  made  the  eyes  hurt  and  the 
brain  reel  with  its  vast  and  inartistic  pretension. 
The  table,  covered  with  gold  and  exotics,  glared 
like  the  vulgar  parade  of  a  seaside  watering-place 
at  the  blaze  of  mid-noon,  and  almost  made  the 
eye  ache  with  its  multitudinous  glories  simply  to 
look  at.  It  made  one  long  for  a  gipsy's  meal  out 
in  a  musk-scented  field  under  the  pale  cold  stars, 
as  a  kind  of  tonic  relief  from  its  scintillating  splen- 
dour. He  sat  alone  at  the  head  of  it  all,  thinking. 

396 


Saints  in  Society  397 

Sir  Mark  had  returned  in  time  for  the  Birthday 
honours.  And  he  had  got  his  baronetcy.  This, 
with  his  now  acknowledged  rule  of  the  Press  world, 
wherein  he  was  still  busy  acquiring  and  begetting, 
may  be  counted  as  the  reaching  of  his  ambitious 
summit.  Millions  of  men  envied  him  to-night. 
To  millions  he  was  the  ideal  figure  of  success  un- 
alloyed. Power  almost  unaccountable  was  in 
his  hands.  He  could  reach  across  continents,  he 
could  sway  kings  and  governments :  he  could  alter 
trade  conditions ;  he  could  help  generously  to  make 
or  mar  his  country.  He  knew  it,  and  he  thought 
of  it  to-night  as  he  turned  his  little  cognac  glass 
about,  round  and  round,  by  the  slender  stem. 
He  knew  it  with  bitterness  unspeakable — a  deep 
unholy  bitterness.  For  there  was  even  yet  a  limit 
to  his  powers.  One  thing,  one  paltry  thing,  with- 
stood him — his  wife's  goodness.  So  it  had  come 
to  this,  so  strangely  do  we  work  out  our  own  desti- 
nies, that  the  woman  whose  selfish,  ignorant  world- 
liness  had  once  threatened  his  future,  now  cursed 
him  by  her  very  faith  to  the  ideals  that  he  himself 
had  taught  her.  Clo  stood  out,  now,  in  his  imagi- 
nation, the  perfected  picture  of  what  he  himself 
had  hoped  to  be.  Clo  was  his  early  ideals  personi- 
fied, the  self  that  used  to  be — and  he  hated  her  for  it. 


398  Saints  in  Society 

We  must  remember,  however,  that  all  pictures 
have  varying  points  of  view.  Mark's  point  was 
clearly  his  own,  and  as  clearly  worthy  of  a  hearing 
as  Clo's,  since  all  souls  are  separate  and  individual, 
and  deserve  their  fair  representation  before  the 
throne  of  unerring  judgment. 

The  man  looked  ill.  His  eyes,  once  fiery,  were 
a  trifle  bleared  and  drawn  about  the  skin  of  the 
lids:  his  face  was  pale,  almost  to  lividness,  and 
wore  the  loose  look  of  muscles  which  have  lost 
their  tone  and  the  failing  of  some  inward  zest. 
It  was  not  only  the  vague  "greying"  over  his 
whole  visage  which  marked  the  change,  but  even 
a  kind  of  alteration  in  his  very  features.  The 
once  resolute  mouth  drooped  at  the  corners,  and 
there  was  that  sure  mark  of  bitter  and  selfish 
emotion,  a  certain  contraction  or  screwing  of  the 
corners  of  the  nose,  those  muscles  which  always 
seem  to  be  beyond  the  control  of  the  most  secretive 
of  sinners.  It  is  one  of  Nature's  sign-boards  that 
never  fails  to  make  itself  seen  and  read,  even  by 
the  crowd. 

A  murderer  who  should  suddenly  see  as  in  the 
flesh  before  him  an  image  of  himself  as  he  used  to 
be  in  the  days  of  innocent  boyhood,  would  possi- 
bly turn  from  the  thing  with  real  loathing.  It 


Saints  in  Society  399 

would  furiously  annoy  him.  To  this  man  who, 
it  is  true,  had  committed  no  foul  crime  save  the 
destruction  of  his  own  higher  self,  the  presentation, 
not  of  his  past,  but  of  himself  as  he  had  hoped 
to  be,  was  a  hated  thing.  Darkness  does  not 
love  light.  And  he  had  grown  to  hate  his  wife 
for  what  she  stood  for. 

There  is  one  thing  to  be  said  in  his  exculpation, 
and  it  is  a  strong  thing.  His  wife  had  no  sense 
of  humour.  Let  us  recollect  what  this  means, 
for  it  is  not  a  little  matter.  If  Clo  could  have 
been  good  with  even  the  dimmest  sense  of  humour 
she  might  have  retained  his  love  and  influenced 
him — who  knows?  And  it  is  part  of  their  tragedy 
that  he  had  none  either.  Had  one  of  them  pos- 
sessed it,  things  could  have  hardly  come  to  this. 
But  that  is  just  one  of  the  few  things  that  birth, 
as  we  understand  the  word,  means  to  men  and 
women.  It  is  just  one  of  the  things  which,  except 
in  a  somewhat  clownish  form,  is  rarely  found  in 
slums.  It  is  one  of  the  gifts  of  the  gods  without 
which  gold  is  as  dross  and  uprightness  strangely 
impotent.  Clo's  goodness  was  of  that  literal 
order.  To  feed  a  beggar,  to  sit  up  all  night  by 
the  side  of  a  sick  person,  were  to  her  the  heights 
of  the  soul's  endeavour.  She  could  comprehend 


400  Saints  in  Society 

physical  ills,  as  can  so  many  good  women,  but  she 
was  incapable  of  understanding  temptation.  To 
her  childlike  mind  black  and  white  were  two 
clearly  divided  things,  incapable  of  intermingling. 
Life  was  a  neatly  marked  chess-board — this  action 
or  thing  was  wicked,  that  was  good.  It  was  all 
very  comfortable  and  very  stolid,  and  very,  very 
fraught  with  despair  for  one  who  had  tried  for 
all  that  Mark  had  tried  for. 

He  looked,  now,  over  the  Past.  They  had 
grown  together  from  their  life  of  poverty  to 
wealth,  title,  and  power — through  his  talents. 
She  had  had  a  little  intelligence — he  could  hardly 
call  it  talent,  he  said — of  an  imitative  nature,  and 
had  risen  with  him.  But  when  he  had  evolved — 
he  chose  to  call  it  evolving — she  had  not  evolved 
too.  She  had,  as  it  were,  taken  up  the  thread 
of  himself  where  he  had  left  off,  and  had  gone  on 
weaving  and  winding  quietly  and  silently,  till 
now,  at  the  end  of  seven  short  years,  she  was  the 
old  Mark  to  all  intents  and  purposes — and  what 
was  he? 

He  was  as  good  a  man  as  his  generation,  he 
said  to  himself,  angrily.  Look  at  his  schemes 
of  benevolence,  look  at  his  work,  look  at  his  in- 
fluence! Every  one  could  not  stick  at  that  re- 


Saints  in  Society  401 

ligious  business  for  ever,  he  said ;  a  man  of  the 
world  had  to  make  his  way  and  live  his  life. 
Women,  of  course,  did  these  things  so  naturally — 
took  them  so  seriously.  Clo  had  made  herself 
a  perfect  idiot  over  the  philanthropic  craze.  She 
was  inconceivably  common — she  had  never  been 
able  to  break  with  the  past.  That  was  why  he 
was  angry  with  her,  he  mused — she  was  such  a 
wretched  reminder  of  his  old  troubles. 

He  had  come  home  in  the  spring  rather  unex- 
pectedly, instead  of  getting  her  to  meet  him  on 
the  Continent,  as  originally  planned,  and  what  had 
he  found?  Nothing  that  he  wanted  to  find — 
nothing  but  that  incomparable  crystal  wall  of 
his  wife's  perfection  rising  up  before  him  in  its 
glittering  immovability,  that  thing  that  had  got 
on  his  nerves,  that  he  hated  as  the  fevered  drunk- 
ard hates  the  mirage  for  ever  in  his  path.  And 
she  had  for  the  first  time  reproached  him — she 
had  told  him  what  she  knew.  And  his  plans 
had  stood  revealed  in  all  their  hideousness.  In 
a  torrent  of  infuriated  passion,  a  mixture  of  dis- 
appointment and  a  stung  conscience,  he  had  left 
her  with  a  few  bitter,  scathing  words — those  fierce 
truths  he  of  all  people  was  so  cruelly  capable  of 
uttering — and  she  had  flown  from  him,  like  a 


402  Saints  in  Society 

creature  some  one  wantonly  strikes,  with  such  a 
face  as  he  would  never  be  able  to  forget.  She 
was  with  Lady  Highgate  now.  For  three  weeks 
he  had  heard  nothing  of  her  or  her  plans.  But, 
hardened  as  he  had  become,  he  could  not  wholly 
get  her  face  out  of  his  mind,  though  he  remem- 
bered it  to  hate  it.  His  wretched  health,  shat- 
tered nerves,  had  driven  him  down  here  to  get 
a  day  or  two's  breathing  space  and  give  him  time 
to  think  what  was  to  be  done.  This  sort  of  thing 
could  not  go  on.  In  his  supreme  lust  of  power, 
grown  now  to  a  mania,  the  mere  thought  that  one 
weak  thing  stood  between  him  and  an  ambition  or 
a  wish  was  maddening.  He  would  make  short 
work  of  this  obstacle  to  his  hopes.  What  was 
there  that  he  could  not  buy?  Look  at  his  sur- 
roundings, look  at  his  great  name,  look  at  his 
skill  and  talent — there  were  other  things  to  be 
bought  besides  gold  plate  and  marble  palaces — 
there  was  men  and  women's  testimony.  Serv- 
ants could  be  bought.  He  had  a  plan  in  his 
mind — it  was  growing  fast.  As  he  stared  un- 
seeingly  at  the  gay  flowers  before  him,  still  turn- 
ing his  glass  idly  in  his  fingers,  in  this  his  hour  of 
utter  degradation,  his  face  sunken  a  little  lower 
between  his  shoulders  in  the  spell  of  brooding 


Saints  in  Society  403 

thought,  he  looked,  without  knowing  it,  the  mean- 
est image  that  a  man  can  look.  Melodrama  is  wrong 
— we  are  not  tragically  beautiful,  picturesque  in 
our  villainies — we  are  very  mean  and  very  vulgar 
indeed.  No  hectic  flush  marked  this  man's  face, 
and  no  knitting  of  his  fine  eyebrows,  nor  yet  did 
a  glance  of  diabolical  cunning  transform  into  a  fine 
study  of  Evil  with  a  capital  "E. "  Eyebrows,  eyes, 
brow,  all  seemed  blurred  and  lost  in  the  virility 
of  that  drawing  up  of  the  nasal  muscles,  that  sour, 
thin  contraction  of  the  mouth,  as  if,  in  the  indul- 
gence of  only  the  lower  motives,  the  lower  features 
alone  stood  out,  the  higher  receding  in  power. 
It  is  the  most  solemn  of  our  mysteries  that  man 
is  himself  both  the  clay  and  the  potter. 

Through  the  silence  of  the  great  still  house 
there  came  sounds  of  some  arrival  in  the  hall, 
and  the  voices  of  women  faintly  heard. 

Sir  Mark  took  out  his  watch;  it  was  9.30. 
Who  could  be  calling  upon  him  at  this  hour? 
After  a  little  delay  the  servant  came  in,  closing 
the  great  doors  softly  after  him  and  approaching 
with  an  air  of  confidential  import  that  even  his 
good  training  could  not  hide. 

"Lady  Vera  Vade,  sir,"  he  half  whispered,  "to 
see  you  for  one  moment.  She  is  staying  at  Chass- 


404  Saints  in  Society 

ingham,  and  she  has  motored  over.     I  was  to  give 
you  that  message,  sir. ' ' 

"  Where  is  she?"  said  Mark. 

"  Lady  Vera  is  in  the  anteroom,  sir,"  the  man 
answered  with  deprecation  in  his  eyelids.  "  Oh! 
and  there  is  also  a  person,  sir,  asking  to  see  you, 
but  I  put  her  off  till  I  heard  whether  you  would 
see  her. ' ' 

"  What  name? ' '  said  Mark. 

"  Mrs.  Deane  is  the  name  she  gives,  sir,"  said 
the  man,  as  if  there  were  some  doubts  as  to  its 
accuracy.  "A  nurse  she  seems  to  be, ' '  he  added 
as  Mark  looked  puzzled.  "  She  says  she  's  walked 
here  all  the  way  from  the  station — she  came  down 
from  London  by  train — and  it 's  a  wet  night,  sir. 
I  did  n  't  like  to  turn  her  away  without  inquiring. 
It  's  a  three-mile  walk,  sir,  and  a  bad  night." 

Dorcas  Deane?  He  rose  and  was  going  to  send 
out  an  angry  negative  when  a  thought  struck 
him .  She  might  have  something  to  communicate ; 
at  any  rate  he  might  get  something  out  of  her. 
He  could  but  try. 

"  Send  her  in  here — I  can  spare  a  few  minutes, ' ' 
he  said ;  "  tell  her  only  a  few  minutes. ' ' 

Now  the  anteroom  wherein  Vera  had  been 
deposited  opened  into  the  room  in  which  Mark 


Saints  in  Society  405 

was  sitting.  The  servant  going  to  the  door  com- 
municating with  the  hall,  where  Dorcas  stood 
waiting,  to  give  her  Mark's  curt  message,  Vera 
became  impatient  of  the  delay.  Opening  the 
door  into  the  dining-room  (she  knew  the  house 
well),  she  swept  into  that  apartment  in  her  usual 
noisily  imperious  fashion,  just  as  Dorcas  Deane 
was  entering  by  the  door  from  the  hall.  Two 
figures  moved  by  clockwork  could  not  have 
entered  from  the  two  doors  with  more  accurate 
precision.  Nor  could  two  visions  of  a  good  angel 
and  a  bad  have  presented  a  more  startling  con- 
trast. Vera,  languishing  and  tricked  for  conquest 
in  a  low  dinner-gown  of  elaborate  Parisian  make 
falling  round  her  elegant  figure  and  sweeping  far 
after  her  along  the  polished  floor;  her  reddened 
hair,  her  reddened  lips,  her  diamonds,  her  bland- 
ishing smile, both  hands  held  out ,  saying,  "Mark! ' ' 
And  Dorcas  in  her  plain  grey  uniform,  splashed 
here  and  there  with  the  mud  of  her  long  night 
walk  in  the  rain ;  her  still  and  lovely  face  tenderly 
flushed  with  the  effort,  rain-drops  glistening  on 
her  hair  and  white-rimmed  bonnet,  and  a  light  shin- 
ing in  her  pure  sweet  eyes  as  if  some  vision  beyond 
our  seeing  were  visible  to  her.  Instantaneously 
the  two  women  stopped  respectively  on  seeing 


406  Saints  in  Society 

the  other,  checked  by  a  momentary  emotion  of 
surprise.  Vera  stood  and  stared  with  outraged 
hauteur  expressed  in  every  line  of  her  angry  face. 
For  a  moment,  also,  Dorcas  gazed  back  at  her  with 
a  look,  though  gentler,  yet  no  less  steady  than 
her  own.  But  she  was  the  first  to  recover  self- 
possession. 

"  Mark  Hading, ' '  she  said  gently,  "  may  I  speak 
with  you?" 

Mark  had  risen  and  stood  looking  uncertainly 
at  his  two  sudden  visitors.  Vera  was  concen- 
trating all  the  contempt  of  which  she  was  capable 
into  her  haughty  stare  at  the  Mission  woman  and 
made  no  motion  towards  her  host.  If  it  were  a 
battle  of  eyes  she  was  determined  to  win.  But 
Dorcas  was  looking  at  Mark. 

"  Who  is  this  person? ' '  burst  out  Vera,  rudely, 
and  also  insincerely,  since  she  had  recognised 
Dorcas  at  once. 

"A  moment,"  said  Mark,  perhaps  a  little 
stirred  by  some  reminiscence  in  the  sight  of  Dorcas 
after  the  years  that  had  passed  since  their  old 
friendship ;  "  she  wishes  to  see  me  on  business.  It 
is  only  for  a  few  minutes.  If  you " 

"I  will  not  wait,"  said  Vera,  angrily,  raising 
her  voice;  "this  person  pushed  in  as  I  arrived 


Saints  in  Society  407 

and  insisted  on  forcing  her  claim  to  see  you  before 
mine.  Surely  this  sort  of  thing  is  very  annoying? 
Your  servants  should  be  reprimanded.  How 
can  you  allow  it?" 

"  Madam, ' '  said  Dorcas,  ' '  I  ask  only  three 
minutes  of  his  time.  I  have  travelled  far  to-day: 
I  have  to  get  back  to  London  to-night.  I  ask 
this  favour." 

"Oh! — some  beggar  friend  of  your  wife's, 
Mark,"  said  Vera,  turning  away  and  shrugging 
her  white  shoulders. 

"  Indeed  a  friend  of  Chloris  Hading, ' '  answered 
the  woman  gravely,  "  also  indeed  a  beggar — for 
I  ask  a  little  patience  and  the  world  has  little  to 
offer." 

"  Let  the  creature  give  her  message  in  front  of 
me,  then, ' '  said  Vera,  in  answer  to  Mark's  glance 
of  perplexity  and  appeal. 

"Do  you  wish  this,  Mark?"  said  the  woman, 
lifting  her  soft  eyes  to  his  face  with  a  look  of  pen- 
etrating inquiry. 

Mark  gave  an  impatient  shrug. 

"Oh!  go  on,"  he  said,  "there  can't  be  much 
mystery."  And  Vera  laughed  a  short,  sneering 
laugh,  devoid  of  any  mirth,  that  echoed  oddly 
in  the  silence. 


408  Saints  in  Society 

"  Good  gracious, ' '  she  said,  ' '  what  a  fuss  these 
people  do  make!  Can't  she  have  a  tip  and  go? " 

"  My  errand  is  a  warning, ' '  said  the  other 
woman,  standing  still  in  the  place  where  she  had 
stopped  on  seeing  Vera,  but  looking  fixedly  at 
Mark. 

Vera,  who  had  drawn  nearer  to  Mark  and  was 
looking  unutterable  scorn,  gave  a  peal  of  rude 
laughter. 

"Say  it — oh,  do  say  it.  How  funny!"  she 
sneered,  hysterical  with  rage  and  spite.  The 
woman  was  invulnerable,  it  seemed. 

Dorcas  looked  still  at  Mark  and  seemed  not 
to  hear  the  interruption. 

"  Then,  Mark  Hading, ' '  she  said  softly,  "  since 
you  wish  me  to  speak  I  will  speak.  I  have  suf- 
fered in  a  dream  concerning  you.  I  am  impelled 
to  come  to  you.  I  am  sent  to  tell  you  to  change 
your  life,  to  change  your  heart — now,  before  it 
is  too  late.  The  world  has  caught  you  in  its 
thrall — I  come  to  call  you  back  to  Christ." 

She  said  the  words  so  gently  yet  so  solemnly 
that  they  hung  on  the  air  after  they  were  spoken 
like  the  tolling  of  a  bell.  There  was  something 
so  extraordinary  in  the  contrast  of  her  surround- 
ings and  herself  that  the  attention  was,  in  spite 


Saints  in  Society  409 

of  itself,  arrested.  The  rich  room,  the  air  of 
luxury,  the  rouged  woman,  the  half-stooping 
man  with  his  seared  face  staring  at  her  with  a 
gaze  almost  of  one  fascinated.  Standing  half 
the  length  of  the  long  room  away  from  them, 
with  hands  folded,  the  still  grey  figure  might  have 
been  a  ghost  showing  out  pale  and  clear  against 
the  dark  carving  of  the  door. 

"What  do  you  say — a  dream?"  said  Mark  in 
a  low  voice. 

"  Yes,  Mark.  A  dream  that  comes  to  me  night 
by  night;  I  cannot  help  myself — I  am  sent." 

"Who  sent  you?"  said  Vera  with  withering 
sarcasm. 

"Madam,  the  Master  of  us  all,"  answered  the 
woman. 

Mark's  hands  grasped  the  back  of  the  chair, 
which  he  now  tilted  in  assumed  carelessness. 

"Oh!  come,  Mrs.  Deane, "  he  said,  trying  to 
put  a  bantering  tone  into  his  voice  which  surprise 
had  made  rather  slow  in  coming;  "you  don't  tell 
me  that  you  Ve  got  a  divine  call  to  come  down 
here  and  reproach  me  for  having  got  on  and  made 
money  for  myself — and  position,"  he  added, 
remembering  his  recently  acquired  baronetcy. 

"  I  come  not  to  remind  you  of  what  you  have 


410  Saints  in  Society 

gained, "  she  said  slowly,  '  that  is  God's  pleasure. 
I  come  to  remind  you  of  what  you  have  lost. ' ' 

"What  have  I  lost?"   he  asked. 

"Yourself,"  she  answered,  "your  soul.  You 
have  lost  Christ. ' ' 

"And  am  I  lost  too?"  put  in  Vera,  tossing  her 
chin  in  sneering  inquiry. 

"Madam,  I  was  not  sent  to  speak  to  you," 
answered  she;  "you  know  best  what  you  have 
lost  or  gained.  You  have  great  beauty,  wealth, 
title,  grace;  perhaps  you  never  knew  Christ. 
Perhaps  you  are  one  of  His  little  ones  who  as  yet 
have  not  seen  Him.  Your  fault  is  therefore  the 
less.  He  loves  you  as  we  love  the  erring  child. 
But  this  man  has  left  Him." 

Through  her  rouge  a  flush  of  deep  red  mounted 
slowly  to  Vera's  hard  face.  Her  elaborately 
dressed  hair  gleamed  ruddy  in  the  light.  Her 
eyes  wavered  a  moment. 

"And  what  do  you  want?'  she  said  curtly, 
surveying  Dorcas  with  a  slow,  strange  interest 
from  which  some  of  the  scorn  had  gone. 

"  I  have  done, "  said  Dorcas;  "  I  came  only  be- 
cause the  message  pressed  upon  me.  Mark 
Hading, "  she  said,  reverting  again  to  him,  "  I  beg 
you  listen  while  there  is  yet  time.  Cast  your 


Saints  in  Society  411 

sins  behind  you — lift  up  your  heart — do  justice 
once  again  to  your  wife — and  begin  your  life 
over  again.  There  is  yet  time.  Pray  to-night 
as  you  have  never  prayed  before.  I  will  pray 
with  you,  though  far  from  you.  To-night  I  will 
take  no  sleep  and  no  rest.  I  will  spend  it  on  my 
knees  for  you.  Remember." 

She  turned  and  glided  quietly  out  of  the  room, 
closing  the  great  door  softly.  They  heard  the 
fainter  sound  of  the  front  door  close  after  her, 
and  her  even  footsteps  on  the  soft  wet  gravel  out- 
side in  the  rainy  night ;  the  wind  sighed  in  a  gusty 
moan,  and  then  silence,  the  silence  of  a  desolate 
country-house.  They  heard  the  ticking  of  the 
clock  in  the  hall.  They  almost  heard  their  hearts. 

Vera  looked  at  her  companion  with  a  glance 
of  mingled  confusion  and  inquiry;  Mark,  still 
clasping  the  chair-back,  looked  on  the  ground. 
The  silence  was  so  tense  that,  as  often  in  such 
moments,  the  first  words  spoken  were  trivial. 

"Just  fancy,  "  said  the  woman.  The  man  said 
nothing.  Vera  shook  her  bare  shoulders  as 
though  stricken  by  a  blast  of  cold,  and  her  teeth 
chattered. 

"  Some  one  is  walking  over  my  grave, ' '  she  said 
suddenly.  "What  an  uncomfortable  Methodist. 


412  Saints  in  Society 

I  sha'n't  stay  now;  I  '11  see  you  to-morrow, 
Mark,  you  don't  look  well.  Go  to  bed  early  and 
you  '11  soon  be  all  right.  I  'm  at  Chassingham — 
you  know — I  suppose?  No,  I  've  got  the  motor 
outside,  thanks.  Don't  trouble.  Oh!  yes,  my 
cloak."  He  fetched  her  furs  from  the  anteroom, 
still  lost  in  that  odd  absorption,  and  put  them  over 
her  shoulders  mechanically.  He  seemed  lost  in 
thought;  he  seemed  to  have  gone  into  another 
world. 

"Ta,  ta, "  she  said;  "see  you  to-morrow." 
But  the  lightness  had  gone  somewhat  out  of  her 
voice  in  spite  of  herself,  and  "  Ta,  ta ' '  said  heavily 
is  ineffective.  His  utter  silence  chilled  her,  and 
the  look  in  his  eyes  was  terrible.  She  was  glad 
to  get  away.  When  she  had  gone  Mark,  without 
uttering  another  word,  went  back  to  his  seat  by 
the  table  and  leant  his  head  heavily  on  his  hands, 
staring  blindly  in  front  of  him.  God  knows  what 
his  thoughts  were.  When  the  servants  came  in 
he  told  them  sharply  to  go  away — he  did  not 
want  to  be  disturbed.  No  man  knows  or  will 
ever  know  what  were  his  reflections  as  he  kept 
that  lonely  watch.  They  were  grim  ones,  for 
he  was  still  sitting  so  when  at  twelve  o'clock  his 
valet  peeped  in,  yawning  and  grumbling  inwardly 


Saints  in  Society  413 

at  the  delay,  and  still  so  when  the  same  man 
looked  in  again  at  two. 

When  the  long  white  streaks  of  morning  fell 
slanting  over  the  disordered  scene  the  first  house- 
maid coming  to  open  the  shutters  found  a  little 
alteration  in  his  position — his  head  had  dropped 
forward  amongst  the  glasses,  that  was  all.  Her 
involuntary  scream  brought  a  sleepy  footman, 
who  grew  suddenly  wide-awake  on  finding  him 
immovable  when  touched,  and  a  butler  who 
found  him  dead.  An  hour  later  the  country 
doctor  discovered,  after  some  delay,  a  discol- 
oured mark  like  a  pin-prick  on  his  wrist,  and  a 
small  phial  amongst  the  overthrown  liqueur 
glasses  on  the  table.  He  signed  a  certificate  for 
heart  failure,  but  he  went  away  with  "morphia" 
on  his  lips. 

That  same  night  in  London,  a  miserably  paid 
reporter  on  one  of  Sir  Mark's  London  papers,  a 
melancholy  creature  in  a  paper  collar  and  a  thin 
overcoat,  was  crawling  his  sad  way  home  in  the 
foggy  drizzle  after  a  long  hard  evening's  work. 
He  had  fed  mainly  on  buns  and  weak  tea  all  day, 
and  there  was  hardly  so  much  as  that  at  home, 
where  a  delicate  wife  awaited  him.  Out  of  the 
corner  of  his  tired  eyes  he  half  consciously  read  in 


414  Saints  in  Society 

passing  some  placard  whereon  the  name  of  Sir 
Mark  Hading  appeared  in  large  letters  in  connec- 
tion with  some  huge  financial  venture  he  then  had 
in  hand.  The  ill-paid  reporter  gave  a  sigh  that 
was  half  an  oath. 

"  Good  God!"  he  said,  "  what  that  man  has  and 
I  have  not !  Why  should  he  have  all  the  happiness 
and  such  as  I  all  the  despair? ' ' 

He  went  home  to  rage  against  the  absolute 
bliss  of  his  master.  And  away  in  Sussex,  in  a 
house  like  a  palace,  a  corpse  lay  face  downwards 
amongst  the  gold  plate  and  flowers  and  glasses, 
and  a  soul  in  utter  remorse  had  gone  to  its 
reckoning. 

Happily  the  Judge  of  men  sees  from  heights 
beyond  our  petty  notions.  If  God  be  very  far 
away  He  also  gets  the  true  perspective. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

'"PHE   death   of   the    famous    newspaper    king 
*      caused  a  profound  sensation  all  over  Eu- 
rope.    It  was  said  to  be  due  to  cardiac  failure 
from  overwork. 

A  year  after  some  one  wrote  a  biography  of 
this  great  man,  with  interesting  allusions  to  his 
vast  charities,  powerful  public  speeches,  and  fam- 
ous dinner- table  witticisms  and  sarcasms,  also 
to  his  great  schemes  as  to  Labour  questions. 
His  early  life,  which  was  considered  rather  low, 
was  slurred  gracefully  over,  partly  in  considera- 
tion for  the  feelings  of  his  widow.  A  very  fine 
portrait  in  Bartolozzi-brown  appeared  as  a 
frontispiece,  and  the  writer  of  the  thing  got 
some  notoriety  for  his  effort,  being  arising  M.P. 
himself. 

Several  hero-worshippers  said  that  the  late 
baronet  was  a  grand  character,  and  that,  be- 
tween ourselves,  it  was  unfortunate  that  his  wife 
had  never  been  able  to  quite  enter  into  his 

415 


416  Saints  in  Society 

greatness.  Other  people — women — said,  "What 
could  you  expect?  Poor  thing,  she  did  her  best, 
but  she  was  so  solemn.  Dull  creature.  And 
pious.  You  never  get  those  low-born  women  to 
acquire  the  real  thing.  '  Others — also  women — 
said,  "  She  bored  him,  you  know.  '  Others,  both 
men  and  women,  themselves  the  possessors  of 
new  titles,  said,  "Oh!  no,  not  morphia — surely 
you  are  altogether  mistaken?  I  happen  to  know 
it  was  heart  disease.  ' 

To  Clo,  in  the  solemnity  of  her  grief,  that  awful 
mysterious  solemnity  of  the  physical  death  of 
those  who  have  already  died  long  ago,  came  many 
offers  of  kind  sympathy  from  the  small  ring  of 
friends  she  could  truly  call  her  own.  But  to  her 
bewildered  vision  there  was  nothing,  nothing  to 
be  said  or  done.  He  was  dead,  really  dead  now. 
And  now,  because  he  was  dead,  he  had  again 
become  the  old  Mark  of  Wai  worth. 

She  shut  herself  in  great  silence;  she  forgot 
Vera  and  the  whole  sordid  story;  she  forgot  the 
neglect  of  herself,  she  forgot  the  falling  away  from 
a  better  hope  that  had  blackened  the  last  years 
of  the  erring  man.  She  only  remembered  Mark, 
with  his  keen  eyes  and  eager  plans  of  mercy;  her 
busy  young  husband,  with  his  clever  tongue,  ever 


Saints  in  Society  417 

kind  and  cheery,  and  wearing  a  blue,  rough  suit, 
and  laughing  at  her  and  Fortescue's  attempts  at 
gentility  over  his  pipe  by  the  little  parlour  fire. 
His  laughter  and  earnestness  came  down  the 
years.  She  forgot  the  financier  and  the  baronet. 
Perhaps  Heaven  did  too. 

The  imps  from  Minden  Street  used  to  come  down 
year  by  year,  when  the  first  stars  of  Bethlehem 
and  cuckoo-pints  twinkled  in  the  lush  green  of  the 
Sussex  hedges,  to  breathe  the  country  air.  These 
were  the  sick  imps,  the  imps  whom  the  doctor  ex- 
onerated by  certificate  for  a  time  from  school- 
cramming  and  starvation.  Later  on,  in  the 
holiday  season,  the  comparatively  whole  imps 
followed  this  batch — those  who  only  had  weak 
eyes  or  wooden  legs  and  St.  Vitus's  dance,  that 
is  and  so  represented  health.  But  the  real  in- 
valids arrived  in  May.  It  was  a  sweet  little  village 
to  which  they  came,  only  a  short  way  inland  from 
the  coast,  the  same  village  at  which  Hading  had 
built  a  country  house ;  there  was  a  house  of  mercy 
to  receive  them,  a  big  garden,  and,  joy  beyond 
all  joys,  a  pony  that  looked  over  the  hedge  from 
a  long  paddock,  day  in  and  day  out,  with  such 
mild-eyed  pertinacity  that  he  had  become  a  fea- 


418  Saints  in  Society 

ture  in  the  landscape.     He  was  a  fascinating  pony, 
dark  bay  colour,  with  a  tow-coloured  fringe  and 
mane,  and  very  fat  sides.     His  nose  was  decidedly 
too  long  for  him,  but  this  gave  him  a  most  takingly 
wise  appearance.     If  you  whacked  him  with  a 
dock  leaf  he  started  off  for  an  apparently  violent 
gallop  round  the  field,  but  suddenly  forgot  in  the 
middle,  like  Vera's  fits  of  pensiveness,  and  came 
to  another  standstill  by  another  hedge,  still  on 
the  hunt  for  sugar  or  apples.     The  imps  adored 
him.     He  was  really  the  only  pony  in  the  world. 
The  name  of  the  house  was  the  Hading  Child- 
ren's Home.     The  widow  of  a  very  great  man — a 
very  good  man — a  man  who  had  spent  his  life  for 
the  poor  and  poor  children — had  built  it  in  mem- 
ory of  him,  said  the  village  gossips.     It  was  a  low, 
wide  building,  built  in  a  quadrangle,  with  a  green, 
very  cheerful  of  aspect,  something  like  a  pretty 
block  of  almshouses,  with  large,  wide  windows  and 
a  sort  of  church  porch  for  a  front  door.     Inside 
it  had  a  playroom  and  clean-scrubbed  floors  and 
rows  of  little  white  beds.     There  were  geraniums 
and  musks  in  the  windows,  and  dimity  curtains. 
It  was  intended  to  give  holidays  to  such  as  never 
indulge  in  these,  or  hardly  even  hear  of  them, 
for  such  as  die  for  want  of  air  in  cities.     The  imps 


Saints  in  Society 

came  down  to  it  in  queer  costumes — rags,  finery, 
and  fancy  dress  of  all  descriptions — with  queer 
manners  and  habits ;  but  its  wise  rule — it  was  well 
staffed — had  a  wonderful  way  of  mending  the 
habits,  and  sometimes  greatly  improving  the  cos- 
tumes, either  by  considerable  additions  or  by  the 
application  of  the  wash-tub.  And  everybody, 
while  staying  there,  wore  a  blue  print  pinafore. 
This  was  Clo's  memorial  of  the  dead  Mark,  this 
quiet  rearing  of  the  best  in  the  hopeless  young. 
Persistently  she  had  refused  to  lend  countenance 
to  memorials  of  a  larger  and  showier  nature :  tab- 
lets and  marble  statues  and  church  windows 
commemorating  him  in  the  glaring  noon  of  his  suc- 
cess. Following  a  tender  feeling  that  had  grown 
in  her  sad  heart  as  she  stood  by  Mark's  ponderous 
white  marble  grave  in  the  Sussex  churchyard, 
she  had  commemorated  only  the  old,  dear  Mark — 
only  the  Mark  who  had  loved  his  fellows  better 
than  himself — only  the  simple,  right-loving  Work- 
ing man,  with  his  great,  grand  schemes  to  right 
his  little  world.  And  over  the  pretty  white  stone 
porch  of  the  Home  was  a  very  finely  executed 
figure  in  a  niche,  also  in  pure  white  stone.  It  was 
the  figure  of  a  printer — a  man  attired  in  the  robes 
and  cap  usually  associated  with  Caxton — holding 


420  Saints  in  Society 

his  printer's  paraphernalia  in  the  one  hand,  and 
leading  a  child  by  the  other.  The  face  was  Mark's, 
the  fine  Dante  profile  shown  sharp  to  the  observer 
as  he  turned  and  looked  down  gravely  and  kindly 
into  the  eyes  of  the  boy  at  his  side.  It  was  a  very 
beautiful,  chaste  thing,  unpretending  in  its  simple 
expression  of  the  dead  man's  best  endeavour. 
Beneath  it  were  the  words: 

"  SIR  MARK  HADING, 
PRINTER  AND  BARONET, 

WHO  LOVED  AND  WORKED  FOR  LITTLE  CHILDREN. 
Judica  me,  Deus. ' ' 

Lady  Hading  used  to  come  down  from  her  house 
in  town  occasionally  and  make  visits  of  a  whole 
month  at  a  time  to  the  peaceful  place.  After  her 
first  year's  retirement  the  county  called,  or  began 
to  do  so,  but  was  gently  discouraged.  She  had 
her  quarters  in  the  home,  a  suite  of  rooms  full  of 
sun  and  musk,  but  she  explained  that  she  was  only 
there  in  connection  with  her  poor  children  and 
should  not  visit.  She  sold  the  great  mansion 
Mark  had  built,  to  the  scorn  of  certain  of  the  neigh- 
bours, and  devoted  her  country  visits  solely  to  her 
sick  babies. 

It  was  one  day  in  May,  towards  the  end  of  the 


Saints  in  Society  421 

month,  when  the  time  had  glided  by  in  such  wise 
for  two  whole  years,  that  she  sat  in  the  grassy 
garden  behind  the  rambling  house  with  some  of 
her  sad  babies.  The  heat  was  so  glowing  and  the 
light  so  magical  that  objects  a  little  away  from 
the  children's  lazy  eyes  appeared  to  quiver  visibly. 
Even  Benjamin,  the  youngest,  a  child  of  two, 
was  quiet,  having  at  last  ceased  to  parade  the 
garden  very  solemnly,  attired  in  a  washed  cream 
flannel  cape  down  to  his  feet  like  a  priest's  cope, 
and  a  red  woollen  brewer's  cap  stretched  tightly 
over  his  apparently  bald  head,  above  a  small  white 
face  of  extremely  pompous  expression.  One  of 
the  sleepy  children  had  thrown  a  woollen  doll  at 
Benjamin  quite  half  an  hour  ago  in  a  fury  of  im- 
patience; this  had  succeeded  in  upsetting  the 
candle-extinguisher  figure  of  that  worthy  full  on 
to  his  face  in  the  grass,  but  he  had  immediately 
recovered  himself  without  even  glancing  round 
at  his  assailant,  and  got  up  and  proceeded  on  his 
pompous  perambulations,  tightly  clutching  a 
flabby  india-rubber  donkey  as  usual. 

Clo,  drowsing  in  her  seat  under  a  big  white  um- 
brella, had  reproved  the  mover  of  this  attack. 

"Leave  him  alone,  dear,"  she  said,  "  Benjamin 
will  tire  himself  out  quite  soon."  And  sure 


422  Saints  in  Society 

enough  he  had,  having  suddenly  tumbled  on  to 
a  rug  with  blue  cushions  and  fallen  into  a  deep 
sleep,  with  his  mouth  wide  open  and  looking 
quite  young  again. 

The  afternoon  had  so  drowsed  its  hours  away 
that  Clo  herself  shut  her  eyes  and  was  almost  be- 
ginning to  dream  when  the  voice  of  the  head  sister, 
a  bright  Scotch  girl  in  a  nurse's  dress,  recalled 
her  to  her  senses.  She  heard  her  name  called. 

"  What  did  you  say,  Effie? ' '  she  asked,  startled 
out  of  her  dreams  and  sitting  up. 

Sister  Effie  was  coming  quickly  across  the  lawn 
from  the  porch  that  led  to  the  garden  from  the 
back  of  the  house.  She  looked  quite  excited. 
Her  rosy  face  was  beaming  with  eagerness.  But 
who  was  that  following  her  and  stooping  under 
the  green  trellis  with  its  red  japonica  to  get  out 
of  the  low  portico  without  ruffling  his  ruddy  curls? 
Out  of  the  porch  he  came  into  view.  The  ruddy 
curls  caught  the  sunshine  and  gleamed  like  gold 
as  he  peered  out  across  the  garden  in  search  of  her 
face.  She  rose  in  a  tremor  of  wild  joy.  He  had 
found  her  out  after  all  this  time.  He  came 
swiftly  across  the  lawn,  stepping  eagerly  over  the 
recumbent  children,  and  took  both  of  her  hands 
in  his,  saying  simply,  "Angel!" 


Saints  in  Society  423 

"  Only  think  of — of  you  coming, ' '  was  all  she 
said,  but  her  face  was  like  a  rose. 

He  glanced  round  at  the  babies,  all  sitting  and 
staring  up  at  him,  Benjamin  very  sternly,  then 
at  the  far  hill  with  the  turquoise  light  over  it. 

"  Is  that  the  sea  over  there  ? "  he  said  in  a  breath- 
less kind  of  voice. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  her  hands  still  tight  in  his, 
"  that  is  the  sea."  Their  eyes  met  in  a  hush  that 
has  no  name,  the  sweetest  hush  in  the  world. 

"Come  with  me,"  he  said,  "come  out  there  to 
the  heather  and  the  sea.  I  want  to  talk  to  you — 
my  darling,  my  darling." 

They  went  away  out  of  the  garden  with  arms 
locked  and  heads  touching,  his  ruddy  one  and  her 
fair  one,  through  the  gate  into  the  meadow,  bathed 
gloriously  in  the  level  golden  glow  that  turned 
the  world  into  a  radiant  magic  garden. 

They  never  said  a  word  to  the  children,  who 
sat  in  a  ring — a  ring  of  blue  pinafores  and  mouths 
like  O's,  from  the  cripple  child  to  Benjamin  in  the 
brewer's  cap — staring  solemnly  after  them  as 
they  glided  away,  away,  heart  to  heart,  along 
the  meadow  path,  between  the  foamy  hawthorns 
to  the  sea. 


Bound  to  excite  a  great  deal  of  favorable  comment 


A  Lost  Cause 


Author  of  "  WHen  It  Was  DarK. 


Crown  Octavo     -    -    -     $1.5O 


Mr.  Thorne,  the  author  of  that  much-discussed  re- 
ligious novel,  When  It  Was  Dark,  which  has  become 
the  theme  of  hundreds  of  sermons,  and  has  received 
the  highest  commendation  in  the  secular  press  as 
well  as  in  the  religious  publications,  has  written 
another  powerful  book  which  also  deals  with  present- 
day  aspects  of  the  Christian  religion.  The  new  story 
is  marked  by  the  same  dramatic  and  emotional 
strength  which  characterized  his  earlier  work.  The 
special  theme  deals  with  certain  practices  which  have 
caused  dissension  in  the  Church,  and  the  influence 
of  ardent  religious  convictions  on  character  and  con- 
duct. Written  in  all  sincerity,  the  book  can  hardly 
fail  to  arouse  wide  and  varied  attention  and  is 
destined  to  take  its  place  as  one  of  the  most  interest- 
comoelling  works  of  fiction  in  recent  years. 


New  York — Q.  P.  Putnam's  Sons— London 


"Something   distinctly    out   of   the   common,  well  conceived, 
vividly  told,  and  stirring  from  start  to  finish."— London  Telegraph, 


The 

Scarlet  Pimpernel 

By  Baroness  Orczy 

Author  of  "The  Emperor's  Candlesticks"  etc. 

A  dramatic  romance  of  the  French  Revolution  and 
the  Emigre  Nobles.  The  "  Scarlet  Pimpernel"  was  the 
chief  of  a  daringbandof  young  Englishmen  leagued  to- 
gether to  rescue  members  of  the  French  nobility  from 
the  Terrorists  of  France.  The  identity  of  the  bril- 
liant and  resourceful  leader  is  sacredly  guarded  by 
his  followers  and  eagerly  sought  by  the  agents  of 
the  French  Revolutionary  Government.  Scenes  of 
intrigue,  danger,  and  devotion,  follow  close  one  upon 
another.  The  heroine  is  a  charming,  fearless  wo- 
man who  in  the  end  shares  the  honors  with  the 
"Scarlet  Pimpernel."  In  a  stage  version  prepared  by 
the  author  The  Scarlet  Pimpernel  was  one  of  the 
dramatic  successes  of  the  last  London  season,  Mr. 
Fred  Terry  and  Miss  Julia  Neilson  acting  the  leading 
roles.  

Crown  8t>o,  with  Illustrations  from  Photographs 
of  the  Play,  $I.5O 


New  York  -  G.  P.  Putnam's   Sons  "  London 


"  MlM  Reed  !•  delightfully  witty,  delightfully  humorous,  de- 
lightfully cynical,  delightfully  sane,  and  above  all.  delightfully 
•pontaneous."— PhiUdclphit  Tekgnph. 


At  the  Sign  of 
The  Jack  o'  Lantern 


By  MYRTLE  REED 

Author  of  "  Lavender  and  Old  Lace,"  "The Master's  Violin,"  etc. 


Uniform  -with  "Lavender  and  Old  Lace" 

6°.     Cloth,  net,  $1.5Ot  Red  Leather,  net,  $2.OO 

Antique  Calf,  net,  $2.5O 

Lavender  SilK,  net,  S&3..5O 


A  genial  story  of  the  adventures  of  a  New 
York  newspaper  man  and  his  young  wife,  who, 
at  the  end  of  their  honeymoon,  go  to  an  unex. 
plored  heirloom  in  the  shape  of  a  peculiar  old 
house,  where  many  strange  and  amusing  things 
happen.  There  is  a  mystery  in  the  house,  as 
well  as  a  significant  portrait  of  an  uncanny  cat. 
A  vein  of  delicate  humor,  and  a  homely  philos- 
ophy runs  through  the  story. 

A  complete  descriptive  circular  of  Miss  Reed's 
books  sent  on  application. 

New  York  —  Q.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS  —  London 


"  The    cleverest  work  of   the  kind  written  in 
many  years." — Rochester  Herald, 


OUR  BEST  SOCIETY 

A  Novel  Dealing  with  the  Life 
of  the  Rich  in  New  York 

By  JOHN  D.  BARRY 

Author  of  "  The  Congressman's  Wife,"  "  Made- 
moiselle Blanche,"  "  A  Daughter  of  Thespis,"  etc. 

Now  in  its  Second  Edition.     Crown  Octavo. 
Cloth,  $1.50. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  descriptions  of 
modern  society  since  "  The  Breadwinners,"  sup- 
posed to  be  written  by  John  Hay.  A  witty  and 
cleverly  drawn  picture,  as  sure  in  its  touch  and  as 
effective  in  its  results  as  a  Gibson  drawing. 

2'own  and  Country. 

The  book  will  attract  the  "  initiated  "  because 
the  author  has  caught  the  real  key-note. 

The  Independent. 

Exceedingly  clever  in  many  ways.  Although  it 
is  a  really  brilliant  satire,  there  is  no  bitterness. 
On  the  contrary,  an  air  of  almost  blissful  good- 
humor  pervades  every  page. 

St.  Paul  Pioneer-Press. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  York  London 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


3  1158  00805  0444 


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